Boasting About Tomorrow
13 Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." 16 As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. 17 Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.
James 4:13-17
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
The lyrics have often been used as a metaphor for life's difficult choices, and many see the boat as referring to one's self or a group with which one identifies. Rowing is a skillful, if tedious, practice that takes perfection but also directs the vessel. When sung as a group, the act of rowing becomes a unifier, as oars should be in sync for the progression of a rowboat. The idea that human beings travel along a certain stream [time] and suggests boundaries in the path of choices and in free will. The third line recommends that challenges should be greeted in stride while open to joy with a smile. Some have questioned the song's implied necessity to row one's boat downstream. This may in fact be a commentary on the paradoxical nature of time's arrow with respect to man's free will in a universe of materialistic causality. The final line, "life is but a dream", is perhaps the most meaningful. With a religious point of view, life and the physical plane may be regarded as having equivalent value as that of a dream, such that troubles are seen in the context of a lesser reality once one has awakened.
In God’s mind which is the universal mind, everything is known. What is, what has been, and what will be. Jesus, being God stated, I am the alpha and the omega. The beginning and the end. God knows what will happen because he set the whole thing in motion on the day of creation.
The book of Jeremiah tells us in chapter 1 verse 5, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart, I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Now this was to Jeremiah who was just as human as you and I. Later in this book God tells of the purpose and plan he holds.
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” In Jeremiah 29:11.
God had great plans for David but like ourselves he was flesh and the flesh is flawed. David decided to take his boat upstream and row against the current. While his men were at war and instead of being there as a source of leadership he stayed behind. Coming out on his balcony he spied a very attractive young woman bathing. Asking one of his servants, “who is this woman I see”, he was told it was Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah. The flesh at this time was strong with David and he called for her. Upon her arrival they had relations and the next thing you know she’s pregnant. Still rowing against God’s flow, David decided to “fix” his problem. He called Uriah and his troops home for a respite. When Uriah reported to David, he commended him on a job well done on the field of battle and told him to go and see his wife meaning for him to lay down with her. This way, any pregnancy could be attributed to Uriah’s one night back.
In the morning, David opened his chamber door to find Uriah sleeping there amongst his men. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you go and be with your wife?”. David was perplexed. Uriah responded, “I could not do so my King because my men were not afforded the same opportunity and what kind of leader would I be if I had enjoyed myself and yet denied them?” So David went to plan b and continued his rowing against God’s current.
He sent Uriah back to the battlefield and told his cadre’ to post Uriah and his men in the area of battle where it was the most fierce. Then when the fight was fully engaged they were to withdraw from Uriah’s flanks leaving him unprotected and vulnerable. It was there Uriah was over come and killed. So David had rowed himself right into a scheme that was murder.
God had plans for David and to set him straight he sent the messenger Nathan to call David out in front of all. David repented and went on to father Solomon as well as become one of the greatest leaders in the history of Israel.
Many of us fight the flow of life that God has already set in motion and we suffer for it. Another biblical example would be Jonah.
1The word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, 2"Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me." 3But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.
Well, Jonah had his own ideas and then God took charge. When it was over, Jonah found himself on the shore of Nineveh, ready to do God’s will.
You see, all through our lives we think we have the answer. We know. We aren’t going to take any guff off of anybody either. If we become dissatisfied with any aspect of our lives, we will find out who is responsible and we will let them know it. If an inanimate object raises our ire, we will curse it and slam it and hold on to our anger and dissatisfaction. If another person gets on our nerves or treats us in a way we are dissatisfied with we will state our case sometimes in fits of rage and that grudge? Well, we will make love to that. We will attract drama and create drama. We will find no happiness and when we do we will treat it like a stranger and soon it will be on it’s way. We will live rowing our lives up stream and against what ever flow we come across because we aren’t pushovers and we aren’t weak and we dislike our lives and it doesn’t have a thing to do with us.
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” In Jeremiah 29:11.
My Job is the worst. I hate my coworkers. My husband is an idiot. My house is a disaster. I’m broke. I don’t have any good shoes.
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours.”
Richard Bach
We must find that flow that God has created for us and jump into it. We must stop this constant revolution of hate and negativity and dissatisfaction in our lives. We must replace it with gratitude and love and a new perspective of optimism regardless of our circumstances. Remember, things could always be worse and right now, if we don’t give complete focus to happiness, forgiveness, charity, and love, we will endure the sadness, the animosity, the greed and desire, and the hate that will consume the very purpose God holds for all of us if only we would surrender to his flow.
Kill the pessimist inside and count the blessings. Live in gratitude and see the good in your life. When seeing the misfortune in others be that example of optimism and express love and charity. It is up to us to live our live fulfilled or disappointed. Find that flow and row row row your boat gently down the stream of life.
“By becoming a conscious choice-maker, you begin to generate actions that are evolutionary for you.” Deepak Chopra
Where we are right now is a result of all the choices we have made along the path of our life's journey. Though some of those choices may not have been good ones or seemed the best at the time, none the less, the fork in the path came, you chose a direction, and there you went, so here you are. With that choice made, many more choices came about and because of them, you have grown and evolved as you would've had you made a different choice or went down a different path.
The world is a place on purpose and regardless of how we feel about our lives, we too are on purpose. You look at an ant hill and you see these ants going to and fro. All headed somewhere to do something. Then you look from atop a tall building down at the subways below and you see these people coming out of the ground, all headed some where to do something. Then you drive on the interstate and cars fly by, passing one another and moving left to right, exiting on road to enter another and yet another. Then you look at the human body and the series of viens and arteries that move platelets and white blood cells here and there, leaving one artery to enter another. Big or small, the universe has purpose. You must find that purpose and get off of fight. Live your life and don't let it live you.
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