Tag / prayer

by Annie Newman

Proverbs 02 – A Quest for Wisdom

I have a toddler who transitioned to a big girl bed last week and has decided napping is for the birds.  Also, she is sick but still refusing to nap, which means she needs to be constantly held and my productive time has dropped to practically zero.  There’s worse things than having to snuggle my baby all day, but I am taking longer to finish new blog posts.  Here’s one I was working on earlier for just this sort of situation.  I’ll be back to Genesis on Sunday-hopefully!!!

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My son, if you accept my words
    and store up my commands within you,
2 turning your ear to wisdom
    and applying your heart to understanding—
3 indeed, if you call out for insight
    and cry aloud for understanding,
4 and if you look for it as for silver
    and search for it as for hidden treasure,
5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord
    and find the knowledge of God.
6 For the Lord gives wisdom;
    from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
7 He holds success in store for the upright,
    he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless,
8 for he guards the course of the just
    and protects the way of his faithful ones.
9 Then you will understand what is right and just
    and fair—every good path.
10 For wisdom will enter your heart,
    and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
11 Discretion will protect you,
    and understanding will guard you.
12 Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men,
    from men whose words are perverse,
13 who have left the straight paths
    to walk in dark ways,
14 who delight in doing wrong
    and rejoice in the perverseness of evil,
15 whose paths are crooked
    and who are devious in their ways.
16 Wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman,
    from the wayward woman with her seductive words,
17 who has left the partner of her youth
    and ignored the covenant she made before God.
18 Surely her house leads down to death
    and her paths to the spirits of the dead.
19 None who go to her return
    or attain the paths of life.
20 Thus you will walk in the ways of the good
    and keep to the paths of the righteous.
21 For the upright will live in the land,
    and the blameless will remain in it;
22 but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
    and the unfaithful will be torn from it.

 

Oh, look!  Second chapter of Proverbs and one of the early verses says we are to search for wisdom as we look for silver and hidden treasure! There again, is Wisdom as a commodity (as referenced in my first Proverbs post).  But this chapter is really calling us on a quest, isn’t it?  We are to “search for [Wisdom] as for hidden treasure” (2:4), and from there on out it reads like the summary of an adventure movie.  We, the heroes of the story, will come across wicked men on crooked paths and temptresses, carrying the shield of the Lord, protected by Discretion- which, by the way, is a way cooler word when capitalized.

But you know what this implies? It implies that we will have to walk through dangerous places.  We will come to crossroads where we must chose the “paths of the righteous” (2:20) or the “dark ways” (2:13) and “paths to the spirits of the dead” (2:18).  It is at these dangerous crossroads that Wisdom will be able to exercise her power on our behalf.

Some of these choices, to be sure, are more obvious.  Taking a newly sober person to a bar is a terrible idea.  As Jesus says in Luke 17:2, “It would be better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be thrown into the sea than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”

But some of these choices may not be as obvious.  Parenting is a great example of this.  Sometimes it seems like nothing you do is right – breastfeeding or bottle feeding?  Stopping breastfeeding at 6 months? 12 months? Four years? You’re going to get flak from somebody no matter what choice you make.  And you know what the right answer is? The one that is right for you (and in this case, your child).  This chapter doesn’t say there is only one good path, but references “every good path.” (2:9)  But sometimes, having so many options can make it harder.  These moments – when Google has fifteen conflicting answers based on which Reddit conversation you chose, when your mom tells you one thing but your best friend another, when you’re feeling a little overwhelmed by the possibilities – this is when  you need to be “turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding.” (2:2) Do it how you will and call it what you want: praying, meditating, maybe even just setting aside some time for list-making, but do it with intention and an open mind, and I believe God will recognize that intent.  Because, as this chapter tells us, if you “call out for insight, and cry aloud for understanding,” (2:3) then you will “find the knowledge of God” (2:5).  We live in an age of unparalleled information, but God can still help us find wisdom.

by Annie Newman

Genesis 11 – What Amazing Gifts

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

10 This is the account of Shem’s family line.

Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad. 11 And after he became the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

12 When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah.13 And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

14 When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber. 15 And after he became the father of Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

16 When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg. 17 And after he became the father of Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters.

18 When Peleg had lived 30 years, he became the father of Reu. 19 And after he became the father of Reu, Peleg lived 209 years and had other sons and daughters.

20 When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug. 21 And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived 207 years and had other sons and daughters.

22 When Serug had lived 30 years, he became the father of Nahor. 23 And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters.

24 When Nahor had lived 29 years, he became the father of Terah. 25 And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and had other sons and daughters.

26 After Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahorand Haran.

27 This is the account of Terah’s family line.

Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. 28 While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. 29 Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milkah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milkah and Iskah. 30 Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive.

31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there.

32 Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Harran.

What amazing gifts our God has given us! Look at our creativity, our ingenuity, our tenacity.  No rocks for building? Let’s make bricks.  No mortar? Let’s use tar.  And how high can we dream? Straight up to the heavens.  God himself says in verse six, that when working together “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”

Our problem is our pride.  We did not build the tower of Babel to serve God, but to serve our own pride.  “Let us make a name for ourselves,” the people say in verse four. This pride is what caused God to thwart us – not our creativity, not our industriousness – our pride.

What would have happened, I wonder, if we had asked for His blessing before building the tower.  What if we had expressed a yearning not for our own fame, but a yearning for a way to be closer to Him?  It’s just an idle thought about an allegorical story, but it does make you wonder, doesn’t it?  What if God had blessed the tower and city of Babel instead of cursed it?  What if those people had lifted up the lowly in their community and said “Here, this we build for you and the glory of God, so that all might know Him.”  Who knows?

I truly believe God wants to see us happy.  Happy, creative and creating, constantly learning and discovering.  But not in a way that forgets Him or at the expense of others.  This past Sunday my pastor spoke to following God’s path and not your own.  It can be difficult to determine which one you are doing.  I’m a worrier and over-thinker by nature, so I second-guess almost everything I do on a constant basis.  But I think avoiding our own modern-day Babel’s can start with a simple prayer.  One of my favorite mealtime blessings includes the line “Bless this food to our use and our use to thy service.” It acknowledges our own work as well as the work of God.  If we keep asking, keep praying “God, lead me down the right path,” we become open to the answer, and more receptive to following it, as well.  So go forth, work, cook, create, and dream as big as you want to, but just don’t forget to ask for God’s blessing, as well.

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That was a very short meditation as I’m pressed for time today.  I believe Sarah, Milcah, and the rest of Abram’s family is mentioned again later in Genesis, so I hope to talk about it more then.