I can see him now.
That genial look on his face as though it didn’t matter what wrong I did, it would not be the end of the world and there were more important things to be upset about. He almost made me feel bad just because he took it so well and went out of his wat to reassure me. With all that, though, I can still hear him say those words again and again.
You didn’t think it through, did you?
I can hear my feeble excuses tumbling out of my mouth. I thought it was a good idea at the time. I was on my own, I wasn’t hurting anyone. It didn’t look too bad at that point. I thought I had it under control and that it wouldn’t get out of hand.
Even as I heard myself uttering these things, I knew how feeble they were. He was right again, I hadn’t thought it through.
The thing as well, was that he didn’t encourage me to just be better at thinking and use my own ingenuity to work things out. He encouraged me to understand what it meant to rely on the wisdom God gives. Not leaning on my own understanding, as the well known proverb said, but acknowledging Him in all my ways. What does His wisdom have to say on the matter, how does it guide and steer?
Of course he didn’t just encourage me to do that. I remember there were plenty of vulnerable moments between us and he would share how he learnt to rely on God. How he too made blunders in the journey and thought that he could get by on his own wits and abilities. It was not the time that was the factor – it was the focus. How each moment and each experience was an opportunity to focus on the wisdom needed.
I witnessed him consider a number of challenging issues in his life. I saw how he depended on godly wisdom to deal with relationships on the verge of divorce. I saw him depend on the wisdom of God when he was counselling young men who were so caught up in the confusion of their identity struggles that they were considering suicide. I saw him operate in such a way in different settings that it showed me that the counsel was not just theory and wishful thinking. Godly wisdom is genuinely available to those who ask and seek it and then rely on it.
Seeing that in action reaffirmed for me how important it is to seek those people who walk in that wisdom as people worthwhile following.
(Photo by Ben White on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 