Anyone who gets on the back of a bull or a bucking horse knows they only have so much control over what is about to happen when that chute gate opens. Anyone who runs a cattle operation knows they only have so much control over their operation to affect the prices come market day.
In the Book of James, James wants us to understand it's God who is in control and it is Him we need to recognize is in control of those outcomes, including a 90-point ride or a buck off and a record market price or a devastating wildfire that burns through the pasture.
James 4:13-17 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”— 14 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. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
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