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James 4:13-15 "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.'"

Think

One Saturday morning, years ago, I was at home doing nothing in particular. Relaxing. Taking it easy. The phone was off the hook, which tells you how long ago this was. At some point I put the phone back on the receiver, and within seconds it rang. A woman's voice on the other end, and she was not happy. "Ed, where are you?" I had no idea what she was talking about. She said, "You are thirty minutes late. The wedding started thirty minutes ago." I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to officiate a wedding that day.

I rushed to get there, but it was too late. The bride had already called a chaplain to step in. The ceremony happened without me. I missed it. I still feel bad about that. Not just because I let someone down on one of the most important days of her life, but because of what it exposed. I had plans that Saturday. Easy, comfortable plans. And I was so locked into my own routine that I forgot I had made a commitment to someone else. My plans were not the only plans in the room.

James asks a question in this passage that deserves more than a quick read. "What is your life?" He does not ask, "What are your plans?" or "What is your five-year strategy?" He asks about your life. The whole thing. And then he gives an answer that should stop every one of us. "You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." A mist. Not a mountain. Not an ocean. A mist. The kind of thing you see hovering over a lake at dawn that disappears the moment the sun hits it.

We do not live like mist. We live like we are permanent. We make plans for next year as if next year is guaranteed. We argue about things that will not matter in five years as if they are the most important issues on the planet. We accumulate and schedule and organize our lives as if we have all the time in the world. And then something happens that shatters the illusion.

A friend of mine from high school became an eye surgeon. Years ago he offered to do Lasik surgery on my eyes. I asked him what it would cost. He looked at me and said, "Free.99." So I went in. They did the whole procedure, and I am not going to lie, it was uncomfortable. But seconds after it was done, I opened my eyes and read the clock on the wall clear across the room. Seconds. After years of contacts and glasses, squinting at road signs and holding menus at arm's length, my entire visual world changed in an instant. One moment everything was blurry. The next, it was sharp.

That is what change looks like. Sometimes it is a gift, like reading a clock you could not read five minutes earlier. Sometimes it is devastating, like a phone call from a doctor or a conversation you did not see coming. But it is almost always sudden. The diagnosis comes back in one phone call. The job disappears in one meeting. The accident happens in one second of distraction. James is not being morbid when he calls life a mist. He is being honest. Mist does not give advance notice before it vanishes.

Why do we need something dramatic to remind us that life is short? Why does it take a close call, a health scare, a loss, to make us hug our kids, call our parents, tell the people we love that we love them? The mist is already evaporating. Right now. Every single day you are given is a day you were not promised.

James does not say this to depress us. He says it to redirect us. "Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'" That is not fatalism. It is not throwing up your hands and saying, "Well, nothing matters anyway." It is the opposite. It is saying, "Everything matters, because none of it is guaranteed." What you remember about the nature of life determines how you respond to your plans. If you remember that you are permanent, you grip your calendar with white knuckles and fall apart when it changes. If you remember that you are a mist, you hold your plans with open hands. You submit them to the Lord's will. And when they shift, you are not crushed, because your identity was never in the plans. It was in the One who holds every plan in his hands.

I still think about that wedding I missed. All of my Saturday plans were in place. None of them included standing in front of a bride and groom. But God's plan for that day did. The question is not whether our plans will be interrupted. They will be. The question is whether we are holding them loosely enough to say, "If it is the Lord's will," and actually mean it. Life is a mist. But the God who breathed it into existence is not. He is solid. He is permanent. And when the mist fades, he remains.

Apply

Hold it loosely – Look at your calendar for this week. Pick one plan you are gripping tightly and release it to God. Say out loud, "If it is the Lord's will." Let that phrase reshape how you hold your schedule, your ambitions, and your expectations.

Pray

Lord, I confess that I live like I am permanent when I am a mist. I make plans as if tomorrow is guaranteed and hold onto my schedule like it belongs to me. Forgive me for presuming on the time you have given me. Teach me to hold my plans loosely and to hold you tightly. If it is your will, I will live and do what you have called me to do. In Jesus' name. Amen.