What Needs to Die?
“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.’ 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. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”
James 4:13-17
“Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.’”
John 13:31
The phrase “God willing” can mean so many things! Sometimes, it is a bit of an afterthought for our grand plans and ideas – a postscript that seeks to redress the balance of our ambition. On other occasions, it can be a mask – we do not want to face our real hopes and desires so we talk about “God’s will” to hide that which with we are not comfortable on our own.
In James 4 above, it expresses humble trust in God’s plans no matter what comes our way, no matter whether what we want happens or not, it is all contingent on God’s will. James 4 reminds us that the outcome is never ours to coerce or forcibly bring about. We are to do the good today God is calling us to do and trust the eventuality of tomorrow to God, and to not do this is sin.
In the Passion, Jesus shows us the perfect example of humble trust. Throughout His ministry, He was aware of the suffering and death coming His way. He knew for a long time it wouldn’t go as He humanly wanted. And yet, Jesus kept doing the good that was His to do: His Father’s will for today, not tomorrow. And when the ‘tomorrow’ came – when Jesus went to His death – He glorified God. He did not live by the religious ambitions of the people around Him: people touting for glory through political success, religious power or otherwise. “Not my will, but yours.” And His Father’s will was for Him to die.
What needs to die for you today? What ambition, grand plan or purpose has your heart and compromises your freedom to do the good God has for you today? Where is your will in conflict with God’s? Where do you need to surrender and trust God is God?
Not my will, but yours.
What needs to die for you today?
