Note to the reader: This is the first of what will be an ongoing series on how Christians should be thinking and living in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike previous series that have had a defined plan and trajectory, this series will cover a wide variety of topics related to the current situation.
All of us are constantly making plans for our lives, even if we’re not doing anything extraordinary. We plan to get up every day to go to work and then come home to our family. We plan to get together with friends. We plan to go to church to worship next Sunday. We plan to go somewhere for a vacation this summer. We make plans for the monotonous day-to-day without even thinking about it, and we assume that things will always be like that because, for the most part, that is what usually happens from week to week.
In God’s providence, he has seen fit to dismantle the plans of billions throughout the world through the coronavirus pandemic, with little hope for change in the near future. Many in the US are now working from home or are out of work and wondering how they’re going to pay their bills. This is not the scenario that anyone was planning for at the beginning of the year.
For many of us, we have seen the reality of God’s sovereignty over the world and our true inability to see our plans come to fruition with new eyes.
Such times help us read James’ words to us in a new light. “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:13-14). People such as these boast about the future – what they will do and accomplish. Talk such as this is not mere talk about one’s wishes or plans for the future. This is boasting done without regard for the sovereignty of God, where man in his arrogance assumes his will will come to pass apart from him.1
If we are truly honest with ourselves, how many of us had this attitude in our hearts at the beginning of the year? We intellectually assented to it, but how much did we actually believe it? Our hearts, not knowing that we would be faced with a deadly virus and statewide lock-downs, made our plans for the future, but the Lord, having planned it from before the foundation of the world, caused us all to live an unexpected reality. How true are the words of Solomon who wrote, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Prov. 16:9). When we forget God’s sovereignty, we are attempting to place ourselves on God’s throne, but it is only an attempt. This is our boasting in arrogance (James 5:16).
The present situation lays bare our folly when we plan for the future without bowing to the sovereignty of God. Although we may feel that we are in control of our future, we merely have the illusion of control. Not only are we not promised that our future plans will come to fruition, we are not even promised tomorrow, something that becomes a reality for thousands every day who did not know the virus even existed until recently.
James’ solution to our folly is quite simple. Stop pretending that you occupy God’s throne. The Lord orders your life and determines the path it will take, not you. “Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that'” (James 5:15). When we say, “Lord willing, we will do this or that,” this should not be something that we glibly say without a second thought, simply because we’re Reformed. We should say this because we believe at our core that nothing happens outside of his sovereignty and that we bow before that sovereignty that may have different plans in store for us.2
When we say this and truly believe it, it will cultivate a new heart attitude that is not only submissive to the paths the Lord lays out for us, it will also help us respond to suffering in a way that honors God. When we bow before his sovereignty as we plan for the future, recognizing he may have other plans for us, when our plans do not materialize, we will be less inclined to grumble against him. This does not mean that it will not be hard, but we will nonetheless be strengthened and will be on solid spiritual footing in the midst of it.
As much of the country remains under lockdown, our inability to be our own little gods of our world has become readily apparent. As we look towards an uncertain future, may we trust ourselves completely to God’s will and rest in the knowledge that nothing happens apart from him.