Rabbi Schneider - Because, You Really Don't Know
I remember back in the 1980s, I was the captain of my church's softball team. And we were playing a game one day and I kid you not, we were beating this team like 16 to one, and I got so cocky and I don't remember what exactly I said, but I made some kind of joke, like this game is over. You know what happened? We lost that game.
And that really taught me a deep lesson in humility and to be very careful with my words, not presuming anything, listen, what James wrote in his fourth chapter verse number 15. James said this, "don't say you're gonna do this tomorrow or you're gonna do that tomorrow, that this is gonna happen, or that's gonna happen". James said, you don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring. Instead he said, "you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that".
I wonder if you and I are living in this deep place of humility, we really don't have a certainty about tomorrow. We really don't know what's around the corner. In fact, it's been rightly said that oftentimes the things that will affect our life the most are things that were unexpected, that we weren't planning on happening.
I know in my life, some of the things that have happened, I could have never planned. I didn't even know they were gonna happen. And conversely, sometimes a loved one can pass away suddenly we never thought that, you know, would even happen because they were in good health. We need to humble ourselves and not be presumptuous. We need to say, "I'll be there tomorrow, Lord willing. I'm gonna do that tomorrow, Lord willing."
Practicing this type of speech and developing this habit puts us in a posture of humility. And it's only in a posture of humility that Father God can draw us close to himself. For the scripture says, "He gives grace to the humble, but resisteth the proud".