How far should we plan the future?

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.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. (James 4:13-17)

John Calvin says of this passage and Romans 1:13: “We hence learn that the Lord frequently upsets the purposes of his saints, in order to humble them, and by such humiliation to teach them to regard his Providence, that they may rely on it; ....... It is indeed the presumption of impiety to pass by God, and without him to determine on things to come, as though they were in our own power;” (Excerpt From Commentary on Romans John Calvin. This material may be protected by copyright.)