Do you find Romans 8:28 – “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” often enigmatic?
I had made plans to travel to Nigeria twice in the last two weeks, on one occasion there was a problem with the Nigerian High Commission’s website and so I couldn’t get a visa to enter the country, and on the other occasion the person buying my ticket was unable to get it because the airlines, Virgin Atlantic wouldn’t accept payment so close to the time of travel because Nigeria is categorised as a country with a high risk of fraud and therefore they require tickets to be paid for several days in advance. It was very frustrating, but this leads me onto the topics of this Morning Thought.
By default when I make plans to do something in the future I will add to the end of the sentence, “by the grace of God”. If I write to someone with future plans I may add D.V. which is an abbreviation for Deo Volente – God willing.
For years I have thought how we in the West are very presumptuous and decadent in declaring what we are going to do in the future. Of course, as a nation we have lost our God consciousness so the majority of people have no idea about James who wrote in his epistle “Go to now, you that say, To day or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: When in fact you know not what shall be even tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away. What you ought to say is, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that”.
The lesson we can take from this anecdote is that we have no power to say what we will or will not be doing – even tomorrow.
