Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands
Boasting about tomorrow
13 Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.Warning to rich oppressors
1 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
In (James 4:13-16) James criticises the churches for making grand plans and boasting and bragging about them. You do not know what lies ahead, he warns. How well we know that!
Dear Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are our provider. We thank you, that you see value in people, and love, and righteousness. We thank you that you are a God of joy, of peace, of friendship of forgiveness, and that these things don’t cost us a penny. Lord let us see the world through your eyes. Amen.
Offer to God your own:
Prayers for other people
Bless one another as you finish – for example ‘I bless you now, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirt.
Amen.