13Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” 14Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. 15Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.”…
The days do not belong to us, they are the Lord’s. How differently do we live with this verse in mind? Would we wake up and rather than hit the snooze button, or go down the litany of our to do list, or worry, we instead asked, “Lord, what is your will for this day?” There is freedom in the revelation that the day was never ours in the first place. It is the Lord who provides our daily bread, who builds or tears down, and it is the Lord’s to do with it what he pleases. What is expected of us in each day? That we believe in him! That is enough, and out of our joy everything else falls into place.
Jonathan’s death is shifting my focus from ownership to stewardship. Every time I switch from opening my hands to the Lord being enough today, I sink. Every time! I’m coming to realize that at the heart of grief is the realization that I can’t and He can. If each day is mine then I follow my will for that day (usually into the pit of sorrow), but if I humble myself and allow the Lord to teach me to number my days correctly, then every moment is an opportunity! Jesus corrected the disciples perspective on time, their days, and their position in those days. While the disciples kept jockeying for the right or left throne in the Lord’s kingdom, Jesus showed them that the greatest were the least, that money and power were not equal with holiness, and that God appoints time, not man. When these men accepted and embraced that God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven, they became instruments of God’s will in every life they encountered. Open prison doors, shaken by heaven. became an opportunity for salvation, not an escape from circumstances! Acts 16:25-34 There is not a single moment that is wasted by God!
But oh how much time we humans waste pretending that we are in mini gods, planning our days and years! We build mansions that are devoid of love. We watch others live fake lives on TV, never really finding out what today was meant to be. We are the most effective when we acknowledge that our tomorrows are borrowed from God almighty. The best plan is for God to teach us to number our days correctly.
Proverbs 19:20Â Listen to counsel and accept discipline, That you may be wise the rest of your days. 21Many plans are in a man’s heart, But the counsel of the LORD will stand.