“Just a moment, now, you who say, ‘We are going to such-and-such a city today or tomorrow. We shall stay there a year doing business and make a profit!’ How do you know what will happen tomorrow? What, after all, is your life? It is like a puff of smoke visible for a little while and then dissolving into thin air.
“Your remarks should be prefaced with, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we shall still be alive and will do so-and-so.’ As it is, you take a certain pride in planning with such confidence. That sort of pride is all wrong.”
The Daily Study Bible – William Barclay:
“This uncertainty of life is not a cause either for fear or inaction. It is a reason for realizing our complete dependence on God.
“It has always been the mark of a serious-minded man that he makes his plans in such dependence…
“The true Christian way is not to be terrorized into fear and paralyzed into inaction by the uncertainty of the future; but to commit the future and all our plans into the hands of God, always remembering that these plans may not be within God’s purpose…
“James is in effect saying, ‘You have been warned; the truth has been placed before your eyes.’ To continue now in the self-confident habit of seeking to dispose one’s own life is sin for the man who has been reminded that the future is not in his hand but in God’s.”
