Day 9 - Issue 22
Proverbs 1:21 NLT
'She calls to the crowds along the main street, to those gathered in front of the city gate.'
Throughout Proverbs, Wisdom reveals the way of God that the disciple is invited to follow. Knowing the way and walking the way are not the same. There’s a lot of angst moving from aspiration to the perspiration that walking the way generates.
I long had Katey in my sights as the girl I wanted to marry. To achieve that end I had to see off two suitors already in the race as I joined it. I developed my strategy and got my nose in front. Having got to pole position I then of course had to summon up my courage to ask her out and eventually to propose. However, I was outmanoeuvred here. While attending a friend’s wedding, just six weeks after going out, Katey asked me to marry her. And no, she wasn’t inebriated!
With Jesus we can either retreat within the recesses of our comfortable church club, or step outside and discern the truth of God along the highways and byways of life. We may be wrestling with a crowd flowing through the underground and fail to see the kindness of one stranger helping another with their toddler’s pushchair. Or wait frustrated in the supermarket checkout queue, little realising that this checkout assistant is the only conversation her elderly customer will have today.
Blinded by my priorities I fail to see Jesus on the street corners and shopping aisles of my neighbourhood. Consumed with protecting myself from the cancer of corruption that infects the world beyond the altar, I offer no alternative medicine to that which will only enlarge the tumour and take away life. Why else would the Son of God step out of eternity and become completely human as well as divine if the message of hope and healing was self-evident? Jesus had time to see faith in a Gentile centurion and a Samaritan pauper even as the rest of life brushed past. Wisdom surrounds us every day, everywhere. We are simply required to travel at the pace of Jesus and pray for eyes to see it.
QUESTION: What are the needs you see in your community?
PRAYER: Jesus, you saw those who were lost and you were filled with compassion. May it be the same for me.
