Don’t plan on it.

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into this or that town and spend a year there and do business and make a profit." You do not know about tomorrow. What is your life like? For you are a puff of smoke that appears for a short time and then vanishes. You ought to say instead, "If the Lord is willing, then we will live and do this or that." But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (Jas 4:13-16)

“You do not know about tomorrow” - Ain’t that the truth.

Did you notice the HUGE stock market drops lately? (How could you have not noticed with all the blabbering on about it on the nightly news?) Now how many people expected that to happen? (OK – some of us did, but we couldn’t know exactly WHEN it would happen, only that it was inevitable.) A LOT of people seem to be SHOCKED by the whole thing! THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!!!! (pffffttttt….)

But why worry about it? You could be drivin’ down the street tomorrow, minding your own business, and WHAM! some guy NOT paying attention rams you and then the stock market would be the least of your problems.

Truth is, we don’t REALLY know what’s comin’ around the bend. Oh, we have a general idea, because, for the most part, things go on much the same from day to day. You COULD get hit by lightening tomorrow, but it’s not very likely. Most likely tomorrow will be much the same as today. Mostly.

So the funny thing is how much people worry about the future. Well, not so much “funny” maybe but a least a little bit of a puzzle. We can plan and plan and plan, but plans can and do get interrupted. (Like all the people who were planning to retire on some stock market portfolio.) So why plan at all? Well…. you DO have to plan a bit. I mean, otherwise you would just be randomly blown about events. We do need to have some idea of what bills we will have to pay and how we will pay them, how much food we need to acquire, etc. That’s not what I’m talking about though. I’m talking about those BIG, GIGANTIC schemes people come up with to get rich quick, or save the world from destruction, or fix all the economic problems. Or, they go the other way and try to predict DOOM, GLOOM, despair and destruction. The prophetic fulfillment of all things! Right.

Ok. I’ll get to the point.

Life requires taking some risks. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but we can’t just sit around afraid to do anything. But stop and think of where most of our fears, frustration and bitterness comes from. Isn’t it “unrealized expectations?” We plan, and strive to complete the plan, and then find things never go according to the plan. Well, maybe you don’t run into that, but I sure do.

What I have found to be the solution is to have the right kind of FAITH. As I have complained about many times, most people don’t seem to understand faith. You may think I mean “wishful thinking” or some other such nonsense. Nope. FAITH is a form of confidence. You can have confidence in your own ability to control your future, or you can rely on a power greater than yourself. That’s the choice God gives us.

Now the thing about faith in God (rather than yourself) is that you don’t get to control the outcome. To have FAITH in God means that you must come to the point where you are willing to accept that He might change your plans and do something you didn’t expect. BUT, in the end, His way will be better than your way ever could be so you go with His leading rather than fight against it or complain about it.

God uses the uncertainty of our lives to demonstrate His ability to direct things. He uses the problems we encounter to demonstrate His ability to turn a problem into something good.

So what’s the benefit to us for stumbling around not knowing exactly what is going to happen next and having all our plans go awry? We get to watch God put His glory on display. So keep your eyes and your ears open, walking in faith, and you might just get to see and hear God do something incredible in your life.

It’s pretty cool when that happens. We can then boast about what God did.

And we avoid arrogantly boasting about what we think we are going to do, only to wind up looking like the idiots who counted on a messed up credit system the financial empire to keep them happy and secure.