James 4:13-17 Go to now, you that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:… It was no part of the apostle's intention to teach that life is necessarily vain and perishing; he suggests that life is what we make it, accordingly as we live to the "outer man" which "perisheth," or to "the inward man" which "is renewed day by day." I. "A vapour" — "YET A VAPOUR MAY BE A THING OF GLORY OR GLOOM. A vapour is often an object of glory, of richest glory. The firmament is the Royal Academy of God, glorified with countless masterpieces of form and colour. The transfiguring touch of the Divine hand changes the pliant vapour into rich sculptures, superb architecture and pictures of matchless grace or grandeur. The "vapour that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away," is a fountain of perennial delight to poet and painter: it calls up our thought to the glory of heaven, to the glory of God. A vapour may also be a cloud — dense, dark, and forbidding. It may obscure the light, discolour the sky, mar the summer. Thus with human life — it also may be a thing of glory or gloom. Some lives are as the cloud which lies on the sky, an inky blot; whilst other lives in their brightness and beauty remind us of those rainbow tints which are very jewels on heaven's bosom. What makes the difference in the vapour? The sun. The orb of day dyes the vapours with colour, warms them with fire, illuminates them with brightness, and fills the depths with shifting scenes of splendour. What the sun is to the vapour, God is to our life; and life shines or saddens according to its relation to Him. "The Lord God is a sun"; and our lives shine — everything in us and about us shines — just as we keep in the stream of His brightness. Acquaintance with God gives life its purity. The vapour apart from the sun is foul and dark; but as the light pierces it, it becomes "white as white wool," "white as snow." As we set the Lord God before us and live in fellowship with Him the baser elements of life are purged, and we attain that purity of heart which is the condition of all joy and glory. In the identification of ourselves with God life acquires sublimity. And through the knowledge and service of God life attains fruition in full felicity. The sunless vapour is that murky weeping cloud which is the chosen image of misery, whilst the sun-smitten vapour spreads a smile on the face of day. Life so strangels sad in itself kindles into rapture as it drinks the light of the Throne. II. "A vapour" — AND YET A VAPOUR MAY BE THE SOURCE OF BARRENNESS OR BLESSING. Indeed a vapour may be one of three things. It may be the source of blasting, as the sulphurous vapour of the thunder-cloud. This is true of some lives; they are only pernicious and destructive. Or the vapour may be a merely barren thing. Not working any particular and obvious mischief, only drifting before the wind in barren magnificence. Thus is it with many lives. Men live for garish pride, or rosy pleasure, or golden gain, or crimson greatness; the earth is no better for their presence, they work no private or public service. Or the vapour may be a source of rich and lasting blessing; the messenger of God, scattering showers of blessing. Thus devoted souls pass through society rich in precious and holy influence; they drop as the rain and distil as the dew, and when they have passed out of sight you trace their passage by the rising flowers. If life is to be noble and blessed it must not be hurtful, not neutral, but beneficent. Many of those passages which so pathetically express the transientness of life, and which we quote with extreme mournfulness, have quite another side to them, and it is well to turn them round and refresh ourselves with their sunnier significance. Job has many of these metaphors. "My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle" (Job 7:6). Hours, days, weeks, months, years pass with confusing rapidity; and we are apt to infer that little can be done or attempted with such conditions. Are we not mistaken here? Swift is the action of the weaver's shuttle, yet each rapid movement *nay fix a thread of silk or gold which shall keep its beauty for ages in royal robe or tapestry. Thus each fleeting moment may see some shining thread shot into the world's raiment or ours, if we are only wise workers in the loom of life. "O remember that my life is wind" (Job 7:7). A breath, a passing breeze! And yet the vanishing breath may utter great thoughts and kind words to the joy and purifying of multitudes. The passing breeze will freshen the stagnant flood, lift the unhealthy fog, awaken music in the stirred branches, and fill the whole landscape with animation and freshness; thus a human life may pass as the wind, leaving the whole face of the community refreshed and vitalised. Our life may be wind, yet may it be one with that mighty rushing wind which came down at Pentecost, sweetening the world. "My days... are passed away as the swift ships" (Job 9:26). Yes, but what treasures the swift ships bring; what treasures the swift ships take! So is it with the "ships of reed" — these frail, swift human lives of ours. What treasures these swift ships bring! They come from God freighted with riches of intellect, feeling, utterance, to enrich and rejoice the world. What treasures these swift ships take! Rich results of sanctified sorrow, of spiritual industry, of high duty bravely done, of years of consecrated toil and thought, of pain and blessing, of faith and love and prayer. We grieve to see the white sails vanishing like white wings into the infinite blue; but we must not forget that these weather-stained argosies — built in the noon and rigged with blessings bright — have steered straight into port with mystic treasures which "wax not old," "eternal in the heavens." Finally, take the figure in our text: "A. vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." Life escapes us like melting mist, and we see it vanish with amazement and distress. Still the vanishing vapour leaves beautiful and lasting effects. Whence the green pasture, the leaf-robed forestry, the rich vineyard, the bowing wealth of corn, the orchards full of ripeness? Are they not all the offspring of vapours that appear "for a little time, and then vanish away"? So the world of noble things and institutions about us — the wilderness blossoming as the rose — is the result of short lives inspired by holy feeling, devoted to high ends. III. "A vapour" — YET A VAPOUR MAY END IN A DRAIN OR A RAINBOW. So widely contrasted is the destiny of that self-determining vapour human life. In the text we see men living without any recognition of the relation of this life to immortality. Giving themselves to life on its physical and human side, they lose all clearness and brightness of soul, the stream ever becoming more turbid as it flows (Luke 12:16-21). This man's lifo ran in the gutter, and ended in the sewer. It is whilst we regard these fleeting days in their relation to the will of God that we penetrate their grandeur and become conscious of exaltation (Deuteronomy 30:20; 1 John 2:16, 17). It is whilst we regard the eternal meaning of life that all the discipline of this world develops greatness and purity of spirit (2 Corinthians 4:17, 18). The legend of the American Indians declares that as the flowers fade in forest and prairie their lost beauty is gathered into the rainbow, and thus they glow again in richer colour than before. It is, however, no legend which teaches the perpetuity of moral excellence. The earth is always being made the poorer by the departure of those whom we so sincerely admired or passionately loved — those who were ornaments of society, the pride of the Church, the light of our home. Rut these are neither lost nor injured. We look up to see them shine forth again in added grace and glory in the rainbow round about the Throne. Let us live in constant acknowledgment of God; let us, so far from accommodating ourselves to the fashion of a world which passeth away, identify ourselves with the will of God; let us thoroughly realise our sonship with God, our heirship of heaven; so shall we feel that we are being purified from every grossness, float we are being caught up to meet the Lord in the air, that we are becoming transfigured members in that ring of glory of which the Lord God and the Lamb are the eternal centre. (W. L. Watkinson.) Parallel Verses KJV: Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: |
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