A Reflection for Wednesday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
“You have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow.
You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears.
Instead you should say,
‘If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that.’” (Jas 4:14-15)
There is a big difference between truly trusting in God’s plans for the future and hypothetically doing so. I could—and even would—say that I trust God’s plans for my future and will allow his will to be done before mine. But is that really true when I face an uncertain future?
I am on the search for a long-term apartment in Germany. This search has been ongoing for almost a year, starting in the first weeks that I knew I would be going to university here. (And I thought finding an apartment in New York was bad!) I have been jumping from short-term apartment to sublet to sublet, and at this point, I’m tired. I am sure my family and friends are tired of hearing about my apartment woes and all the moving I’ve been doing.
The housing market is tough: The landlords met with eight others who wanted that room, that room is great but too expensive, another is too far away, another landlord will not rent to me as a student. One of my hobbies has become searching for housing—perhaps healthier than scrolling through Instagram, though not for my stress levels.
In this situation, it feels almost impossible to trust that God has control over my future. Why am I not in a permanent apartment right now if I want one so badly?
Trusting that God’s plan is the right one is anything but easy, but it does also help to recognize that some things are just out of my control. There is a reason that I am traveling from apartment to apartment. I might not know it yet, but it’s all in God’s plan.
In his letter, James reminds us that living arrogantly, assuming that all our plans will work out the way we want them to, is a sin. We do not know what the future holds, no matter how we plan for it, and we can’t force the future to come sooner (so that I can finally find an apartment) or later (so that I can enjoy a nice spring day a little longer). We should not even make strict plans in the future without the addition of “if God wills it.” In real life, it is even more important to place trust in God but at the same time all the more difficult to do so.
I hope that my apartment situation will be solved by the time this is published. But that’s not in my hands: “If the Lord wills it,” it will be so.
