James assaults the hybris of the traveling merchants for their presumption, and his response to them is to consider the brevity of life (James 4:13-17).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 and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.Our concern today is a brief reflection on the brevity of life, something James had going in 1:9-11. As a flower's fading flowers indicate the brevity of life, so also the merchants need a big reminder and he finds it in the image of a fading mist. Life is like a fading mist.
Merchants, messianists or not, need to know that they don't know what will happen tomorrow. They can presume, but they don't know. Neither do we.
Taking the mind of God as within his view, James takes the long and big view: What is your life? The answer in the long and big is that it is but a mist. Scientists today estimate the earth is something like 3.6 billion years old -- and we live 75 years or so (if we live the average) -- someone do the map. What percentage of the whole are we talking about for an average life?
On top of that, there is an equal entrance and exit number: for every person who enters this world one exits (approximately). Everyone who lives, dies. That correlation is 1 to 1. On top of this, chaos makes its appearances -- some die of unknown sudden causes, some die in a random accident or shooting, some contract death-dealing diseases, and some live fairly normal lives until a good number of years. But the individual doesn't control this.
Life is like a mist that vaporizes.
Taking the mind of God as within his view, James takes the long and big view: What is your life? The answer in the long and big is that it is but a mist. Scientists today estimate the earth is something like 3.6 billion years old -- and we live 75 years or so (if we live the average) -- someone do the map. What percentage of the whole are we talking about for an average life?
On top of that, there is an equal entrance and exit number: for every person who enters this world one exits (approximately). Everyone who lives, dies. That correlation is 1 to 1. On top of this, chaos makes its appearances -- some die of unknown sudden causes, some die in a random accident or shooting, some contract death-dealing diseases, and some live fairly normal lives until a good number of years. But the individual doesn't control this.
Life is like a mist that vaporizes.
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This text is oddly encouraging to those who embrace the will of God. On one level, we are feeble and frail--thus we cannot know and should not speak with certainty about future plans outside of the "if". "If it is the Lord's will...." Interestingly, James does not say that we should pray about the future so we can know for sure. No amount of prayer permits us to drop the "if" from the future. The "if" might appear to make things uncertain and generate insecurity but not for those who know the One who controls the future. Of course, there is so much that we know about God's final plans for the redeemed that we have great hope even in our darkest hour.
Good thoughts on a great text!
Steve Cornell
www.thinkpoint.wordpress.com
Ah, one more thought. Over the past thirty to forty years, Western culture has become significantly insulated from death. We’ve moved aging and dying out of our homes into hospitals and convalescent homes. Suffering and death is something we visit rather than an ongoing part of our lives. In previous generation, aging parents were brought to the homes of their adult children to finish their days on earth. This came with hardships, discomforts and sacrifices but it also offered an important education in what earlier generations called the art of dying well.
see: http://thinkpoint.wordpress.com/2008/09/26/the-art-of-dying-well-2/
SC
Good to be reminded of the brevity of life.
It seems like we as a culture do most everything imaginable to deny our death. The focus seems to be, not our destiny in Christ, but this moment that we have. (With all of the possible choices that we have for the moment and accountable to no one).
Meanwhile, all of us would do well to live fully in the moment, as a people of destiny, trusting God through it all.
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