This Calls for Wisdom

Most of us are familiar with the 7 stages grief that ultimately ends in acceptance and hope. I’ll summarize them in 2 stages: the “shit” stage and the “what now?” stage. The shit stage for many of our existence involves or is related to the shutdown of the world because of the Coronavirus. This leaves us with this new normal of restricted access to people and a lot of time on our hands.  If you haven’t gotten past the shit stage of the Coronavirus, perhaps you’re not ready for the following post.

Some of us don’t like being benched and some of us like being benched a little too much.  Those of us who don’t like being benched are doers. We like to help and feel helpless when we are not being put to use. Sometimes people in this category are told about the practical importance of rest but often minimize our own need for it until we are so burnt out we can’t handle ourselves.

Those of us who like being benched too much I suspect are of the personality type of intuitive or creative (and obviously aren’t concerned about practical things like job security either). We find the most joy in our inner worlds: imagining, creating, and even relating to some Divine source. Our inner thought lives provide the needed entertainment. Books, music, or movies can supplement them. But we really enjoy just listening to ourselves sometimes.

Let me just say I already feel like this is an oversimplification and a rudimentary categorization but it is purposeful.  I suspect that humans in general go back and forth between the two a lot.  This is purely based on my own experience, of course.  When I’m working and take a vacation I have a really hard time relaxing at first and want to do a million things though I know I’m going to need and love the relaxation more than the doing in the long run.

My point is that sometimes we are aware and sometimes we are not aware but there is a way in which we can miss out on our purpose if we fall too much to one side.  One reason I believe this to be true is that I have noticed in general I do not like to do things, like good and important things, because I am afraid of failure.  When the option of not having to try is presented to me, I am instantly relieved. No one to fail, nothing to fail at? Perfect.

For myself, I am really enjoying my time of solitude. I can literally spend all day reading my Bible and communing with God through song. I leave my window open and listen to the birds. I am writing to you now and wrote to you in the previous blog about resting like me. I also have admittedly been fasting social media and to me looking at the news is a chore. One more thing to worry about? No, thanks, I’ll take my comfy bed and cup of chai and conversations with my creator instead.

To be a Christian in my circle, this would win me a badge of honor.  We proudly talk about how its better to be a Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to him than to be a Martha running around doing lots of arbitrary things. We say fear is evil and therefore we shut out the world and gaze upon the eyes of our loving Jesus. (Again, this is an oversimplified version of a Christian worldview.)

The writer of the Psalms in the Bible, David, I think was like me. He could spend hours on the grass just lying around and playing music and enjoying the sweetness of God.  Preachers even talk about this as being the reason he walked so closely with God and led a nation to worship God day and night.

Yet how could he be a king later if all he knew how to do was lie around and play songs?  I think that’s why God gave him the task of being a shepherd.  He was training him.  He needed wisdom to govern and he could only acquire that wisdom through tasks that seemed (probably to him) totally arbitrary to what he felt like doing.

I think like David our ultimate purpose is dominion. Perhaps we not are called to be a king or even work in government. Yet if we are creative we are not just supposed to be musicians. We are not just supposed to be actors. Our primary calling as humans can be found in Genesis 1:28 “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”  We are not unlike David after all.

This calls for wisdom. How are we to do this if we are just lying around in our fantasyland?  Solomon is the Biblical character who asked God for wisdom and God granted it to him.  He wrote these words: “For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them” (Proverbs 1:32).  In times of crisis the call is to be wise and act.

“Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works…For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:18b, 26).  Let’s use our time wisely by discerning what it is that we need to be doing in this hour and do it.