James, a little book of wisdom: living in the moment
Today’s wisdom:
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. James 4:13-17
My random musings:
This section takes me right back to time spent with my Grandad. He used to write the initials DV on letters and I had to ask what that meant. DV is the abbreviation for Deo Volente, a Latin phrase meaning ‘God willing’. He’d say it too. Every time he talked of a future plan, he’d add ‘God willing’ – ‘I’ll see you next Sunday, God willing.’ I must admit that as a young person, I found it really irritating! For a start, I couldn’t understand why he found it necessary to actually say it. After all, surely that went without saying. But most of all, I felt like it sucked the joy out of any future plans – this constant reminder that what you are looking forward to may never happen.
He wasn’t alone, of course. Muslims obey the Quranic command to use the phrase ʾIn shāʾ Allāh when speaking of future events. ʾIn shāʾ Allāh is the Arabic language expression for “God willing” or “if God wills” and is actually used by Arab Christians and Arabic-speakers of other religions as well as Muslims to refer to events that one hopes will happen in the future. The phrase expresses the belief that nothing happens unless God wills it and that his will supersedes all human will.
Now that I am older (and wiser), maybe I understand this all a little better. I’ve seen some of my plans and dreams come to nothing. I’ve seen the unexpected crash in and change everything in a moment. I’ve lost friends the same age as me and younger to cancer. Nothing is certain. All we have for sure is this moment.
I now struggle with five year plans. I don’t find it helpful to plan ahead like that. I can see how for businesses, it may be important to forecast, but how can anyone ever know for sure what is likely to happen? As an individual, I hold loosely to plans. I look forward to things, definitely, but somehow in the knowledge that everything may not go according to plan!
There is an arrogance in assuming that you have it all sorted. You hear people boasting about how they’re set for life, how they’re living for their retirement – and then in one diagnosis or bad investment, their planned future crumbles around them.
None of us knows what tomorrow will bring. Living for the future without enjoying today feels like a sad waste of life to me. It’s about finding happiness in today rather than saying ‘I’ll be happy when…’ It is about seeking God’s will in all our plans. I said I was frustrated with my Grandad’s DV as a kid, but I remember lying in bed with tonsilitis having failed to get the A level results to go to the university I’d planned to go to and praying ‘Not my will but yours be done’. My mum was ringing around universities downstairs trying to find a course that would suit me and take me. And all I could do was pray was for God’s will to be done. And maybe of course, that was the very best thing I could be doing in that moment.
It is good to be reminded that God’s will supersedes any human will.
‘Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’
My question for you:
How could a reminder of the phrase ‘God willing’ change how you think about your plans for today and for the future?
