One thought I had this week while hoeing to prepare my garden patch for planting.
Swiss chard - needs to be thinned soon.
As I picked out grass clumps and weed roots, I was reflecting on conflicts, confrontation and resolution. There are some problems in life that will just die off and decompose if your turn them over and bury them a little. But problems that have a good strong root – they don’t respond to that treatment. They’ll just reroot and then pop-up again at an even-less opportune moment. It’s much easier to remove weeds before I’ve planted the seeds. Weeding is a lot harder once I’m trying to work around delicate seedlings that I don’t want to damage.
Two things this teaches me: Problems rarely just go away – they usually require attention to resolve. So I can deal with it now, or I can deal with it later. Either way, action is needed. If I deal with problems now, they can’t hurt the people and things that I care about in the future.
Finally, a closing thought from Proverbs 1:20-33
20 Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; 21 at the head of the noisy streets [c] she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:
22 “How long will you simple ones [d] love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? 23 If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you. 24 But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, 25 since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, 26 I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you- 27 when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you.
28 “Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me. 29 Since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the LORD, 30 since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, 31 they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. 32 For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; 33 but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.”
Wisdom must be sought after, nurtured, and heeded before the moment of crisis, before the moment of need. If I only look for wisdom in my times of distress, I will never find it. One becomes wise in the quiet moments of everyday life, in listening to God and being a student of life. Then, when I am facing a great problem, my heart will already be tuned to hear the wisdom of the Holy Spirit guiding me out of the maze. Pray that I would practice that discipline now and become that kind of woman.
