Recently, I have been reminded of these few verses from the Book of James in the Bible:
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4.13–5, ESV)
We human beings love to make grand plans. Just two years ago, airlines were expecting more and more travel and airports were planning bigger and bigger expansions. The shrinking of the globe seemed unstoppable. Then COVID-19 hit and all these plans evaporated in an instant. London Heathrow Airport recently announced that it has lost £3.4bn since the pandemic began, predicting that UK air travel may not recover to pre-COVID levels until 2026.
Yet, James’ words touches us on a more personal level too. We toil, we labour, we network, we schmooze, we try to climb up the ladder of worldly success; but for all that, we don’t even know what tomorrow will bring! We forget how small we are—you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Goodness, even the smartest human being to have ever lived would not be able, when asked, to tell us with certainty what the next hour will bring, let alone the next day!
But there is One who does know what the next hour will bring: He who created this universe, the very God who is outside of time and knows our future like the back of his hand. Let us trust Him. We can certainly plan, but let us not take our plans too seriously. Let us submit our limited and narrow plans to God’s infinite wisdom and grace, emboldened by the assurance that God will use His sovereign might to cause all things to work for our good (Romans 8.28). He may, in his magnificent kindness and mercy, allow our feeble plans to proceed and use them to advance his cause. Or he may, in his love, close the door on our plans for our own good, leading us somewhere better instead.
Finally, as Christians, we must plan with the knowledge that Christ may return at any day. Let us not be so mesmerised with our dreams of human advancement that we are caught unawares when God returns. Instead, may the advancement of the gospel and building up of the Church rule supreme in whatever we plan, so that we may hasten the day of the Lord’s return, knowing that we shall soon enter into a New Creation of perfect, eternal union with our Creator.