Wisdom

"For whoever finds me [wisdom] finds life and obtains favor from the Lord" (Prov8:35)..."The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight" (9:10) These verses fit to me. Look at the pattern- there's such concrete, workable answers to be found. I always am thinking or saying things like I want to be wise or I want to be kind, nice, humble. But how to I "do" that? What does being wise look like, how to I get there? Even more than that what do we all want? Well I can't answer for you but I want life. I want freedom to be so content with myself that I'm always comfortable, always joyful. I want to live fully and with abandon to whatever I love and however things are working out to be happy. So on that note, that's how these verses stuck out to me. I was reading proverbs the other day and this is where I came across these two verses. It works itself out in reverse order so follow me. 8:35 Whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord... ok so to find life, since we've established "finding life" as the big goal here, the highest place of joy on earth, to find life we've got to find wisdom. Ok, so then if you go on to 9:10 it says The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.. ok so we have to fear God to gain wisdom. Then it says the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. Insight into knowing how to fear God is knowledge of God. Well we obtain knowledge of God by reading scripture and spending time in prayer or just in God's presence. Being in God's presence is just sitting, clearing our heads of our stuff and trying to concentrate on who God is.

SO there's the answer to life. We want to gain life and God's favor. We start out by reading the Bible, spending time in prayer and just sitting, literally, with God. By doing that we gain insight which is the knowledge of the Holy One. By gaining this knowledge we start to fear God and gradually begin to obtain wisdom. Then we find life because For whoever finds wisdom finds life. I think God has given us such a great tool in the Bible that I often don't take advantage of. I also think that a key to understanding the Bible is being willing to be open, to not come in with preconceived notions on what we think God is but to be willing to let it mold our opinion.

Ubuntu

I learned this today in my African Religions class and since I really enjoyed it and I have a few Africa lovers who read this I thought I would share.

Ubuntu stands for the African anthropology and cosmo-vision of life in community. The South African Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes Ubuntu in the following way:

"It is the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and is inextricably bound up in yours. I am human because I belong. It speaks about wholeness, it speaks about compassion. A person with Ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming others, do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole. They know that they are diminished when others are humiliated, diminished when others are oppressed, diminished when others are treated as if they were less than who they are. The quality of Ubuntu gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them."

Although I do not have time to unpack this statement to you as I would like, I think it is brilliant that so many things scream God in some many ways. Not to say that this statement is Christian or totally right, but to say that it's a great thing to strive to be this person who has proper self-assurance that does not feel threatened when others thrive. We can learn so much from other cultures and peoples that can make us better people by taking the time to listen to their wisdom.

Doing Good

I went to Camp Norris this weekend, it was one of the most reviving weekends I've had in a long time. It was the kind of weekend that awakens the soul and motivates you to strive harder to live more fully and to realize that this life is so great. Camp Norris is a friend of mine's lake house, a cute little name we put on it because it's such a fun place.

I came into the weekend with a lot on my mind. I know that doesn't shock you, when am I not comtemplating something, but recently I've been thinking about the complexity of leading the Christian life IN this world but not OF this world. I live in a college setting that begs to be loved, to be cared for, to have someone to depend on. I live in a setting that needs stability, that needs to know that there is a God that is so great that He's worth giving our lives to because there's joy there and eternal satisfaction. "But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God;" (ps 73:16-17a) This is where I am, and when I read this I sympathized with Asaph a great deal when he speaks of our great envy of the rich, the "happy", the outgoing- you know in a college setting they would be the people who go out a lot, the ones who always have something to do and we envy them because of the number of friends they have and the number of phone calls they get. It seems so lame reading it here on this screen, but it's such a huge struggle I have. But what great comfort that Asaph had the same struggle and you know what he did? He took it to God, he took it all to God and realized that in God we have everything we need. I think a lot of our tasks can seem wearisome when we realize how much we need to be doing to really make a difference in the world around us, but when we take it ALL to God it makes it much easier to bare the burden and our laundry list of good deads doesn't seem so draining, it seems filling. If in dealing with one who does not respond, I weary of the strain, and slip from under the burden then I know nothing of Calvary love. Amy Carmichael