Contemplative Bible Reading

James 4:13-16 (New Living Translation)

¹³ Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.” ¹⁴ How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. ¹⁵ What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ Otherwise you are boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil.

My grandmother Istre quoted this passage every five minutes. Whenever asked about anything that was to happen after now, she would start with the words, “Lord willing.”

These two words come from verse 15. The NLT uses the phrase, “If the Lord wants us to.” The King James Version and the American Standard Version, most likely what my grandmother read, both state, “If the Lord will.”

This is a simple reminded that we don’t know the future. Anything we say about the future is an estimate and is not sure. God knows and God controls. We merely carry out His will.

All that puts us in our little place. Which makes the fact that God came to earth and died for us all the more wondrous.