The word of the day is “parallel.”  In our reading of James 4:7-5:9, we find more gems of the “wisdom from above,” wisdom that is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy” (OSB James 3:17).  Our passage is like a string of pearls. Each saying holds a perfect, complete, and thoughtful insight into living by and in the grace of God (James 4:6). However, we may have difficulty grasping the depth of wisdom in these pearls of divine truth because we are unfamiliar with their literary form. The teachings are not narratives, sermons, letters, or lectures. They are aphorisms or short, pithy sayings after the model of the…