Today's Worship: The Lord at the center of life.

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him in James 4:13-15,

 

"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.'"

 

James addresses those believers who somehow have managed to relegate God to the back burner of their lives. Without reference to the presence of God in their lives, or even the transient nature of their existence in this very temporary life, they carry on their business as though they were here on some kind of permanent basis with no view of God in sight. James brings a clear correction to this type of thinking and injects some much needed reality.

 

We are, after all, only here in this life for a relatively short time. We come into this life, live a few years, some longer than others, but none for long, and then we depart this life. As we get caught up in our affairs here, we often lose sight of the fact that all we do here is very temporary and if anything is left of our efforts, it simply gets passed on to others. We are all transient relative to this life, "a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."

 

Far from being morbid here, James is forcing a needed perspective. We are here, but only for a short time. We are here because God made it so. God has a purpose for us being here and we best be about what it is he has for us with the kind of attitude and perspective befitting that purpose.

 

"If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." Life needs to be lived with the Lord and his purposes at the center, not ancillary to our activities, let alone absent.

 

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share your thoughts of worship with us from your Bible reading today. We'd love to hear from you!

Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com