All That and A Pile of Canvases

You do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

— James 4:14 (NRSV)

I stared at my supply closet. Thirty canvases stared blankly back. My canvases and I were three weeks into obeying the stay at home order for COVID-19. Our women’s tea had been postponed. Our kid’s club had been cancelled for the rest of the year. Church was all online. There was no way my painting party was going to happen anytime soon. When I purchased those canvases on Black Friday, I thought I had considered all the variables and planned exceptionally well. But having a world-wide crisis due to a new, deadly virus had not figured into my thinking in any way, shape, or form. 

James may not have known about COVID-19, but he had the basics nailed. We don’t know the future. God does. And if God wills, we will. Too often we look at our decimated plans and get frustrated that God is messing them up. We rarely stop to consider this may be an invitation to join God's work in the world. Sometimes it costs us our plans, but God's ways are always worthy of pursuing above our own.

Prayer: Dear Lord, Please make your will, my way. Help me to subject all of my plans to your leading. Amen.

Alisha Plummer (New Mexico, USA)