PLANS PUT IN PLACE

There are a lot of hard passages in the Bible, and one of the hardest for me is the one in the fourth chapter of James, where James chastises those who make plans to do business and forget that God is ultimately in charge of our plans and our lives. "Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that.'" To say I plan and forget God's place in my life is like saying Tiger Woods wins golf tournaments: it happens all the time.

I'm doing a workshop at a conference in Atlanta this Wednesday, and for the past three weeks, I've been scheduling business meetings and other activities for my 36 hours in this city. On the eve of my trip, my flight got cancelled, due to the 20+ inches of snow that has fallen on Philadelphia in the past day or so. The biggest blizzard in seven years has been God's way of reminding me that He's still in charge, no matter how much I scheme and plot.

I've been able to reschedule my flight, as well as most of my Atlanta meetings. But I also feel like I'm on borrowed time, time that wasn't guaranteed for me to have. It's like playing with house money. I guess that's how all of life should be, and I guess that's the point of James 4. We don't know how many days we have on this earth, but they're all borrowed. How freeing! It's like playing with house money. We're playing with God's time.