By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Anyone who gets on the back of a bull or a bucking horse knows they only have so much control over what is about to happen when that chute gate opens. Anyone who runs a cattle operation knows they only have so much control over their operation to affect the prices come market day.
In the Book of James, James wants us to understand it’s God who is in control and it is Him we need to recognize is in control of those outcomes, including a 90-point ride or a buck off and a record market price or a devastating wildfire that burns through the pasture.
James 4:13-17 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.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
James offers some pretty strong words to make us think about our place in our own plans when we have no knowledge about what tomorrow is going to bring.
Wildfires have been raging through Nebraska recently and we’ve seen them burn their way through Texas multiple times in recent years. Just a year ago, I found myself grabbing what I could and feeling my own home with the glow of an approaching wildfire in the night sky. I had been watching television and expecting to get up the next morning getting ready to do cowboy church at a rodeo. Instead, I spent the night in a friend’s spare room waiting for word on whether or not my home survived. Praise God, the high winds we were having shifted the fire north into an unpopulated area until it was brought under control as the winds finally gave up.
It’s a helpless feeling but a hard reminder that, good or bad outcomes, God is in control. James tells us that it is His will we should be seeking in everything we do. He doesn’t call it sin, but instead, choosing a harsher word by calling it arrogant and evil for us to boast to others about our plans.
What makes it arrogant is to think we can control our outcomes. That doesn’t mean we don’t work hard toward an outcome. It doesn’t mean we don’t plan out how much feed we think we might need to pick up to make it through until the spring pasture greens up enough to move the cattle. We plan these things with understanding that we are only here for a short time while God has been in control for generations before us and for as many generations as this Earth has left. We need to seek and follow God’s direction through each decision we make.
He ends the section of scripture with a warning that knowing what God wants us to do and ignoring it is sinful.
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