Daddy, Did They Know?
A little over a decade ago, a crime rocked a small community not far from where I live. A husband, his wife, and their adult daughter who was visiting from out of town were all murdered by the son of the couple. Another person who was unrelated to the family was also murdered.
I remember hearing the family’s preacher speaking about the events, the aftermath, how the local church and the community dealt with all of this, and a host of other things. I honestly do not remember a lot about what he said. However, there is one exception to that. In fact, it has been in the back of my mind all for all of these years.
What I remember so vividly is a question the preacher said that he was asked by his own small child:
Daddy, did they know that they were going to die that day?
The answer to that childlike question is obvious. Those people obviously did not have any way of knowing that they would be the victims of murder on that day.
While that is as true as it is obvious, it raises a larger question. When any of us wake up in the morning, do any of us know what is going to happen that day? For that matter, when we drift off to sleep at night, do we have any guarantee that we will awaken the next morning?
All of us have had unexpected things happen to us. Some of them may be a minor interruption in our schedules, an unexpected visitor, a phone call with either good or bad news, or any number of other things. Sometimes those unexpected things have major consequences and can change our lives in unbelievable ways.
We can pay for insurance policies, have a “fine-tuned” calendar/schedule, save our financial resources for both the expected (like retirement) and the unexpected (like storms, floods, sudden loss of income or health, or any number of things). We can make specific plans, think that we “have all of our ducks in a row,” etc., but we really do not know what is going to happen – even the immediate future.
Do you think that there is the possibility that this may be why the Holy Spirit inspired James to write the following words?
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. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13-15, ESV)
There are a lot of important concepts in that passage, but I will suggest only one. It is at least strongly hinted at in that statement that informs us that we “ought to say.” If we recognize that any plans we make for our futures are dependent upon the will of the Lord, then we might want to do all that we can to try to ensure that we are doing the will of the Lord presently. At least that is what it seems to me that this is what we ought to do.
AUTHOR: Jim Faughn
