A Treasure of Common Sense

Friday, May 20, 2022

For the Lord grants wisdom!  From his mouth come knowledge and understanding.  He grants a treasure of common sense to the honest.   Proverbs 2:6-7a

Solomon would have known a thing-or-two about wisdom; Scripture informs us there was not a wiser man on planet Earth.  Following the reasoning of Proverbs here, the wisdom of God, granted an honest person, is a treasure of common sense.  Common sense is defined as:  sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.[1] 

A decision which is “sound and prudent” is my kind of joy.  Most of us have made more than enough of the other kind of decisions, the less-than-sound, and woefully-imprudent.  That kind of decision usually gets one in trouble. 

Now, having stated the (painfully) obvious, let’s unpack the source of common sense…how to move towards being a wise person.  It arguably begins with truth.  Solomon[2] tells us it is to the honest person that God grants a treasure of common sense.  So, that would be a starting point for developing into a person said to possess a treasure of common sense.  Sadly, in the 21^st century world that would be a sparsely-populated starting gate.  James Russell Lowell’s famous line, truth forever on the scaffold; wrong forever on the throne, has never more accurately described a culture that populates this world as now.

Whoever first said honesty is the best policy may have been a Solomon reader.  And she or he was right.  If not just because of some lofty aspiration to be noble or admired, but to rightly understand one can be neither without pure and discerning judgment.  And to be such a person requires an ongoing, absolutely intimate relationship with knowing truth, and speaking truth, all in the context of love.  Paul urged the believers at Ephesus to do just that:

Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.  Ephesians 4:15

For You Today

You could go to graduate school at the most prestigious universities in the world for the next 20 years to study ethics and the workings of honesty.  You might come out with a PhD of this world’s approval, and high-sounding theoretical philosophy.  And the world would probably buy your books.

Or you could sit at the feet of the One who said:  I am the way the truth and the life[3], and begin to experience the common sense treasury’s flooding your soul with what really matters. 

Your call.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road with Jesus; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] Merriam-Webster Dictionary

[2] Author of much of the Book of Proverbs, probably chapters 1-29

[3] John 14:6

When the Demons Laugh

 

Thursday, February 3, 2022

Though I am surrounded by troubles, you will protect me from the anger of my enemies.  You reach out your hand, and the power of your right hand saves me.  The Lord will work out his plans for my life—for your faithful love, O Lord, endures forever.  Don’t abandon me, for you made me.  Psalm 138:7-8

C.S. Lewis, after he’d been converted, wrote many wonderful things to defend the faith of the Christ he’d come to love.  One of the deepest (for me) of these is The Screwtape Letters, an imagined conversation between a senior demon named Screwtape, and his nephew, Wormwood, a demon apprentice.  Uncle Screwtape is mentoring Wormwood on how to drag other humans to Hell.  In one training session, something of a debriefing on the work of an old devil, Lewis recounts something quite apropos to the last couple of years in our generation[1]:

′′One young devil asked the old man:  "How did you manage to bring so many souls to hell?"  The old devil answered:  "I instilled fear in them!"

Answers the youngster: "Great job!  And what were they afraid of?  Wars? Hunger?"  Answers the man:  "No, they were afraid of the disease!"

For this youngster:  "Does this mean they didn't get sick?  Are they not dead? There was no rescue for them?"   The old man answered:  "but no . . . they got sick, died, and the rescue was there."

The young devil, surprised, answered:  "Then I don't understand???"

The old man answered:  "You know they believed the only thing they have to keep at any cost is their lives.  They stopped hugging, greeting each other. They've moved away from each other.  They gave up all social contacts and everything that was human!  Later they ran out of money, lost their jobs, but that was their choice because they were afraid for their lives, that's why they quit their jobs without even having bread.  They believed blindly everything they heard and read in the papers.  They gave up their freedoms, they didn't leave their own homes literally anywhere.  They stopped visiting family and friends.  The world turned into such a concentration camp, without forcing them into captivity.  They accepted everything!!!  Just to live at least one more miserable day . . . And so living, they died every day!!!  And that's how it was very easy for me to take their miserable souls to hell....′′

For You Today

Fear is as much, if not more, of an enemy than any pandemic.  We must keep in balance the prudence of planning and appropriate caution for our own health, and that of others.  Jesus did encourage that his believers were to count the cost[2], meaning understanding there are risks, because we live in bodies that are susceptible to disease and injury.  At the same time, there is little sense in clinging to a miserable life, filled with fear.  Rather than live fearing that which can kill the body, our lives should be spent lovingly serving the One who gives eternal life.

The words of Jesus should be sufficient at this point:

Dear friends, don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot do any more to you after that.  But I’ll tell you whom to fear.  Fear God, who has the power to kill you and then throw you into hell.  Yes, he’s the one to fear.  

Luke 12:4-5

If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it.  Luke 17:33

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title and Other Images:  Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

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[1] C.S. Lewis in 1942 - Old Devil's Letters To the Young

[2] Luke 14:28