What is your life?
I. It is a very mysterious part of God's dealings, this making our life so uncertain. If we were not so thoroughly accustomed to the fact, we should, I think, all consider it a very remarkable thing that God should make so much depend on man's life, and yet should leave it so entirely unknown to him how long he will live. A man has a work to do, a great work, a work compared with which everything else he may do is mere trifling, and yet he does not know whether he shall have twenty years to do it in, or ten, or a few months or days.
II. It will throw all the light we require on this difficulty, if we remember one thing: that our state here is one of trial; we are not told to do this thing and that thing so much for their own sakes, as for the sake of seeing whether we will obey God or not. God's creatures must not be independent, but must be tried and found faithful. No man has any right to say, "Lord, I will follow Thee, but first let me" do my own pleasure. No man may say, I will have my youth to myself, and serve God in my old age. It is an insult to our heavenly Father even to think of such a thing, and therefore what profit would it be to us to know the number of our days, that we might be certain how long we had to live!
III. The truth of the text is the best truth to carry about with us in order to enable us to set things at their right value. If the uncertainty and shortness of life act to make those unhappy who are negligent of the will of God, in the same proportion will it give peace and comfort to the minds of those who do set themselves to do His holy will, for the troubles of life will appear trifling to him who thinks of himself as a traveller on his road home; a person on a journey will put up with many inconveniences, because he says they cannot last long, and home will appear even pleasanter after a rough journey.
Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons,vol. i., p. 257.
References: James 4:13-15. Preacher's Monthly,vol. x., p. 44.James 4:13-16. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 99.