If you spend much time in an Islamic culture, including the immigrant community here in Western New York, you are bound to hear someone say “Insha’Allah.”  I guarantee you will hear it if you are trying to make an appointment or if you are making some other kind of plan.  “Insha’Allah” is Arabic for: “God willing.”

Faithful Muslims refuse to make any prediction or commitment without acknowledging that as mere humans we are not God and our will is not necessarily God’s will.  Even secular people raised in that culture hold on to the phrase, much the same way non-believers reflexively say “bless you” when someone sneezes.

It’s not just Muslims who should not presume that human intentions alone dictate the course of our lives.  James 4:13-15 says: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’”

Maybe like me you grew up hearing people say when making plans, “Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”  In that turn of phrase, they were following the admonition of James.

I’m all in favor of adopting either expression – depending on whether you are more comfortable speaking Arabic or Redneck.  But be careful how you use it.  If when we say Insha’Allah, we mean, ‘I acknowledge that all my plans and dreams are contingent on a thousand unpredictable circumstances, not to mention the intention of other people,’ then I’m with you 100%.  But, if you mean, ‘Every time I hope for something, I hold my breath because God might have it in for me,’ then I think you might be getting it wrong.

Even though Muslims and Jews and Christians all believe that God acts in history and in human lives, none of those faith traditions (at their best) believe that God directly causes the circumstances of our lives.

When we say, ‘God willing,’ we mean to take a humble stance towards life’s uncertainties.  But we also mean to acknowledge that God is sovereign and therefore is reliable in an uncertain world. 

We are contingent – conditioned by world historical events, facts of nature and our personal circumstances, by who our grandparents were and by our temperaments.  God is not contingent. 

God is our fortress, unshaken even “though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea.”  (Ps. 46:2)

Prayer:  Oh, the places I’ll go and the people I’ll see… God willing, Insha’Allah.  Amen.