As we make plans, life happens...

The title of this post comes from our senior pastor, Chris, who said these words this past Sunday in light of the week our church had. On Tuesday morning, one of our younger members passed away at the age of 9. Young Raymond had a heart condition that was diagnosed when he was an infant. His parents were told he wouldn't live to his 1st birthday nor many birthdays following, but he made it 5 months past his 9th birthday. The funeral was scheduled for Saturday.

Our women's ministry team had planned to have a retreat this weekend which had to be canceled, again.  This was the 3rd time it had been scheduled.  I don't think it is any coincidence that the main subject and title of this particular Beth Moore study was Loving Well because once again the people in our church did just that.  They loved well by praying for the family, by bringing chips because Raymond was not a salad person, by making desserts, by setting up tables and serving food, by directing traffic and shuttling people to the building door.  The weekend quickly changed from a setting of learning to love well to actually having to love well and needless to say many others had to change their plans as well. 

All week I found myself quoting James 4 to fellow nurses at the hospital, to patient families regarding their special situations and when thinking about our women's ministry team.  James 4 says,

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life?  For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”

We make plans.  We look to the future and say this day we will do this and that day we will do that.  But James is very clear, we do not know what tomorrow holds.  For Raymond's family, they were unsure when his last day would truely be his last.  For our women's team the question remains if this retreat will ever go as planned.  But our lives are so momentary, or as James states a mist that soon vanishes.  Just a couple weeks prior to Raymond's funeral we had the funeral of the eldest member of our church and for her those 95 years were as quick as the snap of a finger.  Whether we live to be 9 or 95 we do not know what God has instore for our lives.  That's why James states in verse 15, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."  When making plans or life decisions we need to remember that we are not in control of the final say but it is the will of the Lord that shall be done.  Praise to our soverign Lord whose will is to be done on earth as is it is Heaven.