Arrogant Schemes

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 in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

I love that the Bible isn’t just a list of “do not…” but when we are told to not do something, we are given something much better to do!  Children want to do things, so telling them “don’t” is so much more effective if we give them something to “do.”

This passage warns against boasting about our plans for the future to “carry on” and “make money.” Boasting about this sort of thing implies that we’ve got it all figured out, we want others to see our success, and we quite delight in watching others envy us.  We not to boast in our own “arrogant schemes,” especially if those schemes involve wrongdoing in order to achieve our goals.

But we “ought to say” something else.

We ought to say that our future belongs to the Lord, his will, his purposes, and our humble heart that submits to this will.

Planning for our future isn’t evil.  But planning a future that excludes the Lord is.  In fact, it’s sin.

Go ahead and plan, but submit your plans to the master architect and make adjustments, listen to his directives, and build accordingly.