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Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow… (James 4:14).
I could modify this wisdom from James to say, “I don’t even know with certainty what will happen today!”
It’s okay to make my daily plans—servants in their master’s household do this—but I must never forget that I am not my own Master. I belong to Another, and He can use me as He knows best.
God does know—perfectly knows—what will happen today and may “interrupt” my plans (of course, it is only an interruption from my selfish perspective) as any moment.
In C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape is an older, more experienced demon, who is giving advice to his young nephew Wormwood about tempting his patient. Screwtape knew that this attitude of thinking, “My time is my own” is an ideal place to focus temptation. He counseled Wormwood—
“Now you will have noticed that nothing throws [your patient] into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. … You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption ‘My time is my own’. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.”
This “Mine!” attitude can be kept in check by starting each day with the reminder that, “This is what I plan to do today, if the Lord wills.” With this in mind at the start of each day, I can view unexpected people or situations that come my way not as interruptions to my day, but as opportunities to glorify my Master. He wants me to steward the 24 hours He gives me each day, and my top priority has to be remembering that these hours are a gift from Him, not hours that are mine to do with as I please.
If I get upset with either the person that “interrupts” me or the situation which “takes up my time,” that is an indication of the “Mine!” attitude that I need to ask the Holy Spirit’s help to correct.
I’ve often joked that after “Mama” and “Dada,” the next word most toddlers learn is, “Mine!” So there’s a lot of that attitude that has been ingrained in us from birth. The Holy Spirit knows just how much “Mine!” is in there, and He knows how to help us remove it. Trust Him in that process.
And if you would like to check out some related posts, take a look at…
- Confession: I struggle with being an atheist, where I talk about how I use the acronym I.T.L.W. (“if the Lord wills”) to help me trust God with my day.
- In Run to wait I use an example from Mr. Carson in the television series Downton Abbey to teach us about the urgent and important matters that we have to juggle each day.
- In I checked nothing off my To Do list today I share a real-time example of how God’s “interruptions” were really His opportunities for me to be a blessing to others.
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Craig T. Owens 