Most of us make plans and appointments weeks or months in advance. I know what I am doing until December when I will take leave, and where I will go. Much of this is already booked — for otherwise I will not be able fo find accommodation.
So yes, we plan. Yes we run businesses. And then James takes our plans and ambitions and finds them wanting.
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.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
I know the business models of a fair number of service companies, and how they rely on paying minimum wage to people, substituting the unqualified for the skilled, and they call this efficiency and facilitating recovery. I also know that the regulators in my country love such, for they underbid conventional systems.
The very systems that pick up the mess and fix it when things go wrong.
Many people who are rich have cheated and stolen to get there, true. But the rich and powerful now are as often the public servants and bureaux, and their policies can be as oppressive as any Trump. Moreover, they are not limited: Trump cannot scale, bureaux can and do.
And the petty tyranny of such can destroy our plans. We succeed as the LORD wills, but this often requires that the petunias don’t destroy what we are doing. For they cost not the deep state a thing, doing their bidding for free.
We need to be fair to our employees and colleagues and plan, with prayer. And not assume it will happen. Because things can, and do, go wrong.
