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”— 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. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
Comment: All planning ahead is not arrogance. But thoughtless assumption that you are in absolute control and failing to acknowledge God’s over all supremacy is arrogance. It may well lead into a life which seeks to be independent of God or, as life can be snuffed out so quickly, to tragic failure.
Prayer: Help me to live a life well balanced between earthly responsibilities and dependance on You, O God.
As I read it! 
Thank you Barry for your comments on this passage. I can remember, that many years ago when I grew up in the Goodwood Baptist Church, the people would often say, at the end of a conversation, “Deo Valente” – God willing.
That saying seems to have disappeared in our conversations today. Perhaps it should be revived.
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