Summer is here! For students like me, that could mean some extra free time, so this month I want to dive into using our time wisely. This week we're studying a longer verse passage than usual, but it all applies to what we do with the time we have.
"Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow."
I am a person who likes to make plans. I love looking forward to exciting events and planning for them. However, James points out here that, in spite of all our plans, we don't know what will happen. I've personally experienced this over the last few months as my life has taken many twists and turns which have upended many of my expectations. So should we simply never make plans or have expectations? I don't believe so, and James gives us a better way of viewing things later on in this passage.
"For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."
In the grand scheme of things, our lives are short and insignificant. Realizing the brevity and frailty of our human lives can humble us and spur us on to making the most of the time we have, for God's glory.
"For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that."
This is the better perspective that James shares with us. We can make plans, but we should always seek God's will and be willing conform our will to His. We should be ready to accept when He changes our plans.
"But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil."
Thayer's Greek Lexicon explains the use of the word boastings here as "an impious and empty presumption which trusts in the stability of earthly things." We have already noted how our plans here on earth are not stable. But we do know Who is always a steady and stable Friend. God knows exactly what will happen in our lives, and it is evil to boast about our own worldly presumptions.
"Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin."
This final verse shows us practically how we should be spending our time--doing the good that we know to do. How do we know? God's word and the Spirit's conviction. When you know that God is asking you to do something for His good, that is what should devote your time to.
I hope that we spend our time this summer doing the good that God asks us to do, that we would live conscious of the brevity of the time we have, and that we would be open to the Lord's will and not boasting of our own. Let's put these things into practice this week.
God bless.
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