Mosaic (Nov 28)
- Amber Thiessen
- 15 minutes ago
- 5 min read
"What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. "(Jam. 4:14)
A fog hovers over the still waters of the lake. Rays of light peek quietly over the horizon, illuminating the haze. As the sunbeams brighten, warmth breathes into the blanket of mist and it dissipates like a sigh.
The verse pulls me back to summer mornings watching this transformation take place. Then, the stark bite of humility settles in. Our lives rise and vanish just as quickly—here for a breath, gone in the next. And yet, that briefness creates an urgency, a pull to make the most of the time the Lord has entrusted to me.
“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:15-16)
That urgency echoes the warning tucked in James 4—not a ban on planning, but a caution against presuming we control tomorrow.
James writes: “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”—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. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (Jam.4:13-15).
This truth pressed on me again last week as I sat in a meeting room in Kenya with our international mission board. Our task was to look ahead—to think outward rather than inward, to keep Christ-centered churches among all African peoples at the heart of every conversation. It was planning, yes, but planning with an open hand. Planning with prayer. Planning aware of our own limitations and God’s limitless wisdom.
In a world that feels overwhelmingly full— juggling families, ministry, work, and the quiet burden of invisible responsibilities—these words from James can land with either relief or weight. On some days, “your life is a mist” feels like a permission slip to rest in God’s sovereignty. On other days, it feels like a reminder of everything left undone, everything slipping through our fingers.
Perhaps we read James and assume he’s discouraging us from planning at all. But he isn’t. He’s confronting our habit of planning without prayer—charting a future shaped by our self-sufficiency rather than His direction. He calls us to acknowledge the Lord in all our ways, not to avoid making plans, but to make dependent ones.
His warning could nudge us toward fatalism—if life is a vapor, why strive at all? But that isn’t his aim. James has been urging us to loosen our grip on earthly treasure and invest our brief days in what lasts.
“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their said died and was raised” (2 Cor. 5:14-15).
We sat around the conference table when the power suddenly dropped—a normal occurrence there. The room dimmed for a moment until the generator successfully kicked in. We reviewed reports, considered future direction, and reflected on twelve years of steady, prayer-shaped leadership from our International Director.
He leads with prayer. He confesses freely when he errs. His humility—his steady dependence on the Lord—has marked our organization, and his example has shaped me. I thank the Lord every time I remember him.
Now we entrust the role to a new director. The future is unknown, but not unseen. So we pray for an abiding posture before Christ—for wisdom, discernment, courage, and strength. It is a passing of the baton, the kind that reminds us how quickly seasons turn and how important it is to root our leadership, decisions, and daily rhythms in God’s presence.
And this is where James’s words meet your life and mine.
Because you don’t need to sit in a boardroom in Kenya to feel the weight of planning your days. You might feel it at your kitchen counter, mapping out the week. You might feel it in the overwhelm of a family schedule, or in the quiet ache of wanting to live more faithfully in the time and spaces God has given you.
We are all planners—grocery-list planners, calendar planners, long-term vision planners. And James’s invitation is not to stop planning but to plan with humility, pray with dependence, and live with an eye toward eternity, knowing every breath is a gift meant to bear fruit as we abide in Christ.
“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” (Ps. 90:12)
As the mist lifts from the lake, so our days rise and fade. Numbering them doesn’t lead us to despair, but to wisdom—the kind that anchors our plans, our pace, and our hopes in the Lord who holds every one of them.
What is one area of your life—big or small—where you sense the Lord calling you to plan with greater dependence on Him?
In Articles
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A Few Traveling Moments
The morning coffee spot at a guesthouse near to our heart; Indian-style french toast for chai break; JavaHouse coffee beans!!; one of the daily selfies sent for the kiddos-hanging out in the conference room.
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