One phrase I don’t hear very often from church people is, “Lord willing.”
The pandemic is a terrible reality check. We’re not in control of our lives as much as we may have thought we were. There are plenty of stories about people who ignored physical distancing and became infected with COVID-19. Church people too. Imagining themselves in control, they were not. “And he told them a parable, saying, ‘The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:16-21).
The rich man was confident he could make his plans for the future come true, but the pandemic has us all looking ahead with doubt. When will there be a vaccine? When can we all get tested so we know whether we have the coronavirus or not? What will the new normal look like? For every worried question we have about our future, there are many prognosticators. Some are experts trained in their fields; others are people not so qualified but confident filling the media with their opinions. Whatever, most of us are realizing we’re not in God-like control of the future.
“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).
Church people do a lot of talking about witnessing to our faith. Using “Lord willing” would be a good way to open up a conversation with someone who doesn’t really know the God who comes to us mortals in Jesus.