Today.

Boasting About Tomorrow

 ¹³Come 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"— ¹⁴yet 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. ¹⁵Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." ¹⁶As 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 4:13-17

This comes to mind today as I begin the preparations for our Wed. night stuff.  This is hard passage to read today, especially as I consider where my mental framework is right now.  We've been doing a bit of house-shopping; my car is, well, my car; I am a little less than a LONG year away from being done with my coursework at Bethel.  Each of these is on my mind this morning; include in the mix that I'm a bit awash with the things I've got to or would like to do (lesson prep, information upload in a variety of formats, the fact that I've not prayed/read/written in some time, homework) and this passage from James comes as both encouragement and a big old kick to the teeth.  The message for me today is to focus on what is in front of me, not to worry about what I do not have or the time I have 'lost' and to make the most of each minute today.  Do what He says, conquer what lies directly ahead, and trust that what is yet to come will be taken care of.  And be thankful for the moment, for the blessings, for the things, and do not waste energy on wishing and overly ambitious planning.  Easier said than done, but a challenge I believe today is manage-able.