Every day I receive a “Scripture of the Day” which I will
often read before I even get out of bed, but on occasion I won’t get to it
until later in the morning. Such was the case this past Saturday. I was sitting
in the living room with my best friend when I took a moment to read it: A glad
heart makes a happy face; a broken heart crushes the spirit. (Proverbs 15:13). Well of course a glad heart is going to make
you smile and a sad heart weighs you down! Who doesn’t know that?!
That’s when I turned to my friend and said that I wished I
knew what I was missing because the book of Proverbs really just sounds like a
bunch of common sense sayings—things everyone knows and it seems kind of
ridiculous to say it out loud, let alone have them in a God-inspired, timeless,
sacred book. She gave some of the arguments I’ve said myself in the past—maybe back
then, it wasn’t “common” sense. After all, someone had to think these things
up. Morals were different. Cultures were different. We’ve learned a lot over
the centuries. And while any or all of this might be true, I was still not
satisfied because if it is in God’s Word, then it cannot be irrelevant to me
today. Therefore I must be missing something!!! But what?
When I get stuck in this kind of logic loop, I always turn
to another trusted and knowledgeable friend who never fails to point out the
flaw in my logic and gets me back to moving forward. When I told him what I was
thinking, he said to me, “I refuse to believe that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” is
irrelevant to your life. Of course, I had to agree, but still, how am I to hear
what God wants to tell me in these “If you’re happy and you know it, your face
will surely show it” kind of sayings? Then he said something that is absolutely
common sense and yet had not occurred to me—he told me to read one chapter a
day and ask God himself what he is saying to me? (If you want to know what
someone is saying, you ask them, not someone else!)
So I read the first chapter last night as suggested and what
God said to me is that while I may know these God inspired proverbs to true—the
way I love, live and think doesn’t always reflect that truth…even though it is
common sense.
1 comment:
I never could get into Proverbs, The Book Of. It seems too much like somebody shaking a finger at me, or, as you say, plain common sense.
But then I consider that, if it was common sense and easy to follow, then what would be the point of writing it down?
Post a Comment