We all have a different attitude toward making plans. Some of us have a ten year plan with specific goals to achieve. Some of us want to hit it big in music or sports. Others live day to day as an adventure.
Remember when you were 8 years old and you had a dream of what your future would look like? What was it? Did you want to be a chef or astronaut? What did it feel like? It’s natural to look ahead and to imagine doing something great.
What types of plans do you keep now that you’re an adult? Are you a planner or dreamer? Do you live in the future?
What I’m most curious about is this: Do your plans serve you? Some of us get by just fine based on the way we make plans and think about the future. However some of us have a difficult relationship with the future. It can cause worry and have a big influence on how we live our days right now. How we think about the future affects how we live in the present. The bible has some insightful things to say on this topic:
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. (James 4:13-17)
At first glance it seems like James is cautioning us to avoid making plans – “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.” His statements imply that it is fruitless to plan because we know very little and can depend on even less. But when you move through the passage it becomes clear that James isn’t advising against planning, but is actually making a very important distinction about making plans. Rather than making plans about what we think is best for ourselves we should be planning on how we can be our best in the world. The passage gives wise counsel on how to live our lives:
Don’t just make plans of what to be – make plans of how to be.
The frightening truth is that the next breath you go to take isn’t guaranteed to be there (If it is the Lord’s will, we will live…”). Rather than spending your energy deciding what you’d like to be doing way down the road, why not decide how you’ll spend that next breath? Why focus on changing circumstances that we have so little pull over? Instead take a look inside at changing yourself – the realm you have the most impact on.
When we “live in the future” of our plans and desires it’s easy to get caught up in acting a certain way and trying to inch ourselves closer to what we desire. We fall into the trap and “boast” in our “arrogant schemes.” What would it look like if instead of trying to act like what we want, we put more intention into acting like what we already are and then seeing where that fits in the world?
