Scripture for the Day

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"— 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. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Thought for the Day

I spent most of yesterday working on plans for the coming year, plans for our capital campaign, plans for someone else's capital campaign, and this morning I find myself confronted with this passage from James, which is a healthy corrective given my focus in the last few days! Yes, it is necessary to plan for what lies ahead, both in terms of our work as well as in terms of our private life. Much of our financial planning at the moment focuses upon the reality that within 3-5 years I could well retire, but meanwhile, as we seek to build a new facility at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, my work planning is related to raising the funds for that building. However as we plan it is necessary to keep this proviso in mind that James puts before us. It is arrogant to assume that I will even be alive to see the fruition of those plans, let alone anything else. It is always "God willing," and "If the Lord wills it," that should be the stabilizer to our thinking, dreaming, planning, preparing. As Jesus tells us in the parable of the silly rich man who kept on making plans to expand his empire, "Fool, This night you soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" (Luke 12:20).

Thanksgiving for the Day

We praise the living God that he is the Lord of time and history.

Intercession for the Day

Let us consider in prayer how our plans and preparations are influenced by the reality that the Lord is Lord of every facet of our lives.

Collect for the Day

God our deliverer,

who sent your Son Jesus Christ

to set your people free from the slavery of sin:

grant that, as your servant William Wilberforce

toiled against the sin of slavery,

so we may bring compassion to all

and work for the freedom of all the children of God;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

Amen

(Today the church celebrates the life and witness of William Wilberforce, the great social reformer, who died in 1833)

Readings for the Day

1 Samuel 17:31-54, Psalm 31, James 4:13-5:6, Luke 24:13-35