Good morning. It’s Sunday, March 29th, aka Palm Sunday.

🥳 Congratulations on starting today with God, and thank you for letting us be a part of it.

📖 Verse Of The Day

— James 4:14

🧠 Devotional

In James 4:13–16, James is writing a letter to early Jewish Christians scattered among the nations, and he says this:

“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’”

“Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

“Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’”

“As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.”

Put simply, this is what he’s saying:

You’re making plans about your future like you already know how it’s going to go, like where you’ll be and what you’ll do. But the truth is, you don’t even know what tomorrow holds.

Your life is like a mist, something that shows up for a moment and then disappears, which shows how short and temporary it is.

So instead of speaking and living like you’re in control, you should live with the mindset, “If the Lord wills.”

And when you leave God out of your plans and act like everything depends on you, that’s where it becomes arrogance.

But that doesn’t mean you should ignore your responsibility or act like your choices don’t matter. James isn’t saying not to plan, he’s correcting how you speak about the future without God.

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life…”

Deuteronomy 30:19 (NIV)

You are still called to choose, but you don’t control what will happen tomorrow, so you make plans and decisions while recognizing they depend on God’s will.