I woke up early this Saturday morning with our move on my mind. In the beginning we thought we knew God was moving us to another city. More than that, we felt God was speaking "purpose" to us. We were moving to fulfill God's purpose in us.
As time went on our thoughts changed. We knew one thing--we were selling our house and moving. But where? Reid's son asked us to stay in town and live in the house he would buy. Another of his sons is wanting to move back here in order to be near family. Our grandson doesn't want us to move and offered to clean out their barn and make it livable for us. We like the weather here and have friends, and doctors, and a good hairdresser :)
All which makes it hard to pull up roots at 73 and start over.
Yet we prayed. "Lord, where do you want us?"
This morning I sat in my favorite room, a room I may not have when we downsize, and read my Bible. I began in Ephesians and read about God's plan from the beginning to make us his children. I went to my Amplified Bible and found a sticky note I'd written many years ago and left on Psalm 90. I'd written four scriptures from the Psalm: 12,14,16,17. Below them was this sentence: God in circumstances shaping life, not circumstances. As I read the verses and meditated on the statement, I saw the truth of our move.
I love my house and I love the space I have. Thinking about squeezing all my "treasures" in a smaller place or having to live without them, is humbling. Humility! Of course. God is working humility in us, and as I read, I saw that He is answering our prayers for wisdom. Humility and wisdom. God's purpose is always to shape our lives.
Purpose is being, not doing.
When I saw this, gratitude came. Ah, ha! Something else God wants from us--gratitude. Oh, works happen, too, but they don't come first because if they do, then humility and wisdom suffer and gratitude pales into pride.
We don't know where we are going to live or who may buy this house and when, but it no longer matters. God is at work in our circumstances shaping our lives and we are grateful for that!
Showing posts with label wisdom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wisdom. Show all posts
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Listening to Wisdom
Funny how great minds work together. This morning I talked to God just a little and journaled that I hadn't heard from Him in awhile but it was probably because I hadn't sat still long enough to listen. Then I read my brother's blog.(http://jimmiesblogspace.blogspot.com/) He wrote about listening to his head instead of his stomach. (I've been known to do that myself.) I went to what I call my Sun Room (or Son Room) and opened my Bible. It didn't take me long to find Proverbs 1:20-33. In my Bible this is titled "The Call of Wisdom." The content spoke to me about our economy and the people who made the decisions that put our country in this precarious position. On another level I saw it more personally.
Wisdom (God) is always calling out to us. Solomon says Wisdom is calling aloud, raising her voice, crying out, speaking. You'd think if God is speaking that loudly, someone would listen. Me, for instance. This morning I listened. I heard my own body's complaint about something I've been overeating the past month. Since this is what I've been most concerned about, I'm glad I'm hearing the complaint. I'm hopeful I won't let it go in one ear and out the other. (Or in one fat cell and never out again!)
But more important than my personal foibles is how all this applies to our country, and to those of us in the country who can't do anything to turn the economy around. We are the ones (are we the complacent fools Proverbs speaks of?) who have to live through it while the "simple ones" (Proverbs's words, not mine) in authority try to get us out of the mess. The final verse in Proverbs 1 reads, "But whoever listens to me will dwell safely and will be secure, without fear of evil."
Listening to Wisdom is where I plan to hang my hat. I hope my brother will hang his there. But even more than the two of us, I'm hopeful there's someone, or many someones, in Washington who'll hang their hats there, too.
Wisdom (God) is always calling out to us. Solomon says Wisdom is calling aloud, raising her voice, crying out, speaking. You'd think if God is speaking that loudly, someone would listen. Me, for instance. This morning I listened. I heard my own body's complaint about something I've been overeating the past month. Since this is what I've been most concerned about, I'm glad I'm hearing the complaint. I'm hopeful I won't let it go in one ear and out the other. (Or in one fat cell and never out again!)
But more important than my personal foibles is how all this applies to our country, and to those of us in the country who can't do anything to turn the economy around. We are the ones (are we the complacent fools Proverbs speaks of?) who have to live through it while the "simple ones" (Proverbs's words, not mine) in authority try to get us out of the mess. The final verse in Proverbs 1 reads, "But whoever listens to me will dwell safely and will be secure, without fear of evil."
Listening to Wisdom is where I plan to hang my hat. I hope my brother will hang his there. But even more than the two of us, I'm hopeful there's someone, or many someones, in Washington who'll hang their hats there, too.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Get Smart?
We saw the new movie, "Get Smart," yesterday. It got me to thinking.
A re-do of the original television series by the same name, the new Maxwell Smart is as lame-brained as the original, yet he manages to get out of trouble and catch the crooks. He's an agent for CONTROL, a secret U.S. agency. That's about it. But after sitting through the movie (we have friends who laughed out loud during it), I got to thinking exactly what being smart means.
We believe we have smart grandchildren, and our children were smart in school. We know people we say are smart because they are accountants, physicians, computer techs, engineers and on and on. We don't think about truck drivers or janitors as being smart. I looked up the word and Webster gives definitions of sharp pain, enduring distress, pay a heavy or stinging penalty. The number three definition is to be witty or fashionable. Finally, at number four the slang is intelligence and know-how.
Remember in grade school calling some one a "smart alec" or "smarty pants?" And there's the new (at least to me) smart ass. We have smart cards (a small plastic card that has a built-in micro-processor to store and process data and records), smart money (for well-informed insiders, bettors or speculators), smart-weed (a variety polygonums with strong acid juice--what?), and as we saw in Europe and are seeing here now, Smart cars (little cars that use less gas but wouldn't stand up against a bicycle if they were in a crash.)
We all want our children to be smart. We want to be considered smart (instead of dumb.) But maybe instead of smartness, what we really desire is wisdom. Wisdom is way above smartness. It's the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships, to have good judgment, good sense, to make wise, sane and sensible decisions.
Ted Bundy was smart, but he wasn't wise.
In the beginning of his reign, King Solomon was wise, but when you look at his life, it doesn't look like he was very smart. He had an obsession for women (seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines--give me a break!), foreign women who were able to turn him away from God. He built places to worship and sacrifice to other gods. This was a guy who had seen God twice! It's hard to figure out why Solomon lost his wisdom, even after writing words like: "Wisdom is better than strength," Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good." Was he prophysying to himself?
It's easy to get smart, get book learning, watch television and know all the trivia that will win you a million dollars if you're on the right show, save the planet, influence politicians and CEOs, make a perfect score on every test, operate on someone's brain or heart. . . but it's harder to be wise.
It just might be that the truck driver or the janitor we think doesn't have book-learning might be the wisest man we know. Listen to what people say, how they live, who they admire, how they treat other people.
Wisdom is easy to see when we're looking for it.
A re-do of the original television series by the same name, the new Maxwell Smart is as lame-brained as the original, yet he manages to get out of trouble and catch the crooks. He's an agent for CONTROL, a secret U.S. agency. That's about it. But after sitting through the movie (we have friends who laughed out loud during it), I got to thinking exactly what being smart means.
We believe we have smart grandchildren, and our children were smart in school. We know people we say are smart because they are accountants, physicians, computer techs, engineers and on and on. We don't think about truck drivers or janitors as being smart. I looked up the word and Webster gives definitions of sharp pain, enduring distress, pay a heavy or stinging penalty. The number three definition is to be witty or fashionable. Finally, at number four the slang is intelligence and know-how.
Remember in grade school calling some one a "smart alec" or "smarty pants?" And there's the new (at least to me) smart ass. We have smart cards (a small plastic card that has a built-in micro-processor to store and process data and records), smart money (for well-informed insiders, bettors or speculators), smart-weed (a variety polygonums with strong acid juice--what?), and as we saw in Europe and are seeing here now, Smart cars (little cars that use less gas but wouldn't stand up against a bicycle if they were in a crash.)
We all want our children to be smart. We want to be considered smart (instead of dumb.) But maybe instead of smartness, what we really desire is wisdom. Wisdom is way above smartness. It's the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships, to have good judgment, good sense, to make wise, sane and sensible decisions.
Ted Bundy was smart, but he wasn't wise.
In the beginning of his reign, King Solomon was wise, but when you look at his life, it doesn't look like he was very smart. He had an obsession for women (seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines--give me a break!), foreign women who were able to turn him away from God. He built places to worship and sacrifice to other gods. This was a guy who had seen God twice! It's hard to figure out why Solomon lost his wisdom, even after writing words like: "Wisdom is better than strength," Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good." Was he prophysying to himself?
It's easy to get smart, get book learning, watch television and know all the trivia that will win you a million dollars if you're on the right show, save the planet, influence politicians and CEOs, make a perfect score on every test, operate on someone's brain or heart. . . but it's harder to be wise.
It just might be that the truck driver or the janitor we think doesn't have book-learning might be the wisest man we know. Listen to what people say, how they live, who they admire, how they treat other people.
Wisdom is easy to see when we're looking for it.
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