I have been thinking and meditating on this text for a little while:
James 4:13-17
(13) 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”— (14) 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. (15) Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (16) As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (17) So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

I grew up riding the bus to school.  No one likes this.  No one.  Anyway, I would walk down to the bus stop in the freezing cold winter and wait for the bus.  To pass the time I would blow hot fog breath and watch it disappear.  You know what I’m talking about.  You did it too.  At most, it would last 3 seconds, then it was gone.
Interesting, this is how long God says our lives last.  That really puts it in perspective for me.
When I think about life this way, 2 things happen:
1.)  I am really awakened to just how short life is and that I don’t want to waste any of my time with stupid, trivial things that don’t matter in eternity.  I could provide a list here, but I fear that I would offend some of the things that you might hold dear, causing you to defend them because they are “fun”.  So I won’t.  I’ll just ask, do the things you engage in for the majority of your time matter for eternity?  If they don’t, why are you doing them?  (very tempted to make a list, but I’ll move on…)
2.)  I am really fearful because I am so selfish and easily distracted.  Why is it so easy to press into everything else besides Jesus?  I am fearful because I have to make myself think this way, or I will revert back to “cruise control” right away and just go through the motions of life.  Life lived for Christ should never be lived on cruise control.

more thoughts to come this text…there is so much in there…