Tomorrow’s World?

“Masters of the universe” is how some twenty-first-century bankers have been described. James speaks to first-century equivalents. More modest worldliness creeps into those of us who meticulously work our way through life from school to degree to job to career promotion. We live and breathe as if somehow we can control the future! The modern business trip is nothing new either. Mobility was part of first-century commerce too, and travel plans were needed even more then.

It is boasting, not planning, that James is attacking. His alternative does not ignore the future but understands that we cannot control it, let alone guarantee it (15). Above all, he wants us to see ourselves as we really are: very transient beings with a fleeting life that is vulnerable to so many forces beyond our control. Disease, death, global economic crisis, the Lord’s coming, all might end our futures tomorrow (14). We will need to find meaning and purpose within that framework, not in our brazenly or carefully planned futures. It is the Lord’s will, not mine, that will have the last word on my business, my life and me.

These ideas run against the grain of how we have been trained to think about life, to such an extent that James adds verse 17. A saying seemingly pulled from elsewhere is placed here as a warning for those of us who will find James’s caution too easy to ignore. When life is going well who hears the warnings? Yet James rounds off by telling us that we do know better now. Our value, our self-worth, our future lies not in realizing our plans but his. We can’t just blend our careers in with everyone else anymore. We know what is “good” now. To ignore it is not oversight, but sin.

What would it mean truly to take your faith to work? Do you have the balance right between future planning and seizing the opportunity of today?