Sunday, June 5, 2016

James 4 - Perspective

On Ride For Doug Sunday, I was asked to share a little bit about how I view the words from James 4 in light of our personal journey. This is what I came up with.

James 4

In James 4, we are instructed about “Boasting About Tomorrow”. Pastor Wes has asked me for a bit of my personal journey on trusting God with our tomorrows. What he didn’t specify is whether or not I was going to be a cautionary tale.

On February 3, 2005, our tomorrows changed forever. Our son Doug was diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. While normally an inherited disease, ours was a fresh mutation. No warning at all.

In the few sentences that the doctor spoke – all of our tomorrows changed. I no longer could say “I’m going to be a Hockey Dad.” Or “we’ll go to the park and play catch.” Or “I’m looking forward to teaching you to ride motorcycles.” All of the things that we as parents said we would do evaporated in an instant.

We were not in control of tomorrow – no matter how much we boasted about it.

I’ve had plenty of opportunity to think about this. Things tend to rattle around in my head for a while until eventually some nugget of truth comes out.

For me, with this passage, that nugget is the fact that God’s perspective is infinitely different from mine. I am looking at the world with the viewpoint of “best possible life for my 81.24 years”. I measure success and failure based on what I accomplish with my time on earth. Success, wealth, fame, happiness, fulfillment, good deeds and the like measured over the span of my life.

God, on the other hand, has a different plan for my tomorrows. God looks at me and doesn’t see just a middle aged guy doing the best he can. He sees me as just beginning my infinite journey. My time on earth is just a flash in the pan compared to my time spent afterwards with him in heaven.  And that changes things.

What good are success, and wealth and happiness when measured against an eternity in heaven? What value is health in a mortal body - that will be discarded shortly for an eternal perfect body? Why do we put such importance on the things of this earth?

In those moments of clarity, where I actually GET the perspective, I learn to value character. Integrity, honesty, love, perseverance. These are things that matter. They are what goes with you after you finish your 81.24 years. Strength of character and love of God. Those have eternal value. So if God is building in me by taking away _my_ plans for tomorrow – I guess that’s for the best.

When I can capture this perspective in my mind, then trusting God for tomorrow becomes a whole lot easier. When I realize that the reason Gods tomorrows and my tomorrows don’t line up is because I’m not using the right perspective to measure things, then things tend to click into place. And that brings relief and peace.

Please pray that I will learn to live in this place of perspective. God has adjusted our tomorrows yet again. On Tuesday night this week, we received word that the clinical trial medication that Doug has been on is being discontinued. We have very little information, and it’s too soon to even try to guess what this means to tomorrow – but I’m sure it will make a lot more sense when I can find God’s perspective again.

God is in control of tomorrow. I get that. Some days it’s the trust part I have trouble with. But I’m working on it.

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