Listen to Thought for the Day on BBC Sounds.

I don’t know how you are with abbreviations. Whether you like them or loath them.
We use them all the time for better or for worse:-
DIY
RSVP
ASAP
and now with texting there are even more abbreviations than ever
4YEO – For your eyes only
LMK – Let me know and
ILY – I love you.

When I was growing up I would often say to my parents “See you later!” and they would reply ‘Yes. DV’.
I hadn’t a clue what DV meant?
Direct Voltage
Darth Vader or
Déjà vu?

Actually I learned much later it meant ‘Deo Volente’, Latin for “God willing.”
None of us can presume for tomorrow. In spite of what many would like to tell us, we are far from ‘in control’ of circumstances or events. Every breath we breath is a gift from God.

The book of James puts it this way;-

“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.” Why, you don’t even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? You are merely a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say: “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is not only daft, it’s also evil.”

Jesus once told a story about a farmer. It could easily be about any of us. His land produced good food and so he thought to himself “This is what I’ll do. I’ll tear down my existing barns and build bigger ones and there I will store up all my grain and goods and I’ll rest back and congratulate myself that I’ve plenty stored up for my pension pot. “Take life easy: eat, drink and be merry.” But God said to him “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? This is how it will be,
said Jesus, with anyone who stores up things for himself, but is not rich towards God.”

That’s what we might call an an abbreviated life. Cut short.

Life is not about ‘things’. Possessions. An expansive life is having our hearts drawn toward God as our fulfilment.

Good morning.