(James 4:13-14 NKJV) Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
What is your life? My life? A vapor trail. Now you see us, now you don’t.
A young man I worked with died in a car accident over the weekend. Gone. Vapor trail. Here for a little while then we vanish away, now only memories are left. I wasn’t especially close to this person; he was new, learning the job, seemed to enjoy what he did.
We all, or at least many of us say, “Well, you never know.” But we really don’t. I may not be on this earth tomorrow. You may be gone by Saturday.
We don’t know what will happen tomorrow. We make our plans, but those plans become meaningless when we die. We don’t need to worry about fixing the leak in the roof, or having the brakes on the car checked. We will have nothing to do with building the new patio or going to Rome on vacation. We have absolutely nothing to do anymore with our house and car payments, keeping up the insurance, spending time with family.
All gone — separated from this world forever.
God fills us in to this reality, but we don’t often want to hear it. Even as religious folk, or professing Christians, we don’t often want to think about what comes after “the vapor trail.”
(James 4:15 NKJV) Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”
God needs to be in the daily picture of our lives, front and center, behind and to the side. If our sovereign God wills, I will take another breath and maybe do this or that. If the Lord doesn’t will, then I too am but a memory.
The death of someone near us, even an acquaintance or co-worker, is close enough to cause a rift in our time and space and make us pause to give eternity a thought. But it shouldn’t take someone’s death.
Every day we ought to say, “If the Lord wills, I will live an ddo this or that.”
