Boasting about Tomorrow

¹³ Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.”^{(A) 14} Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.^{(B) 15} Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.”^(C)

¹⁵ Since I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a double favor;^{[a](A) 16} I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on to Judea.^{(B) 17} Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to ordinary human standards,^[b] ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time?

¹³ I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you, as I have among the rest of the gentiles.

¹⁰ Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.^(A)