James 4: If the Lord Wills

James quotes the confident planner: today or tomorrow we will go to such a town, spend a year there, trade and make a profit.

His objection is not to planning. It is to the missing clause. You do not know what tomorrow brings; you are a mist that appears and vanishes.

What he recommends is small: say instead, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.

Four words added to a sentence, and they quietly relocate who is in charge of the year.