Good Morning, Father - Part 5 - Wisdom

Sometimes I clean out files and find things I have written and set aside then forgotten. When I rediscover these musings, it’s not unlike finding myself when I didn’t even know I was missing. 

I am going to share, over the coming posts, one at a time, a small collection of devotionals I wrote over a decade ago, titled, Good Morning, Father. In His unfathomable wisdom, He knew I would need these affirmations and faith strengthening words in a future time unknown to me as I typed them. And now the time has come.

May you be blessed with whatever you need.

For Him,

Meema

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Introduction 

Sunrise is the renewal of a promise. A chance to begin again, afresh, with all the bad choices of the previous days behind us, every new day is an opportunity to seek to serve God and use whatever time we have remaining to us better than we have ever done before.  We cannot know how many mornings we are granted, but if we make it through the night to see another dawn, we are given the gift of time, at least once more, to get it right. For by the amazing grace of our Sovereign God all the wrong living we have done in the past is forgiven and forgotten in the instant we are willing to surrender and move forward toward Him and His will, relinquishing our own.

Though the days we have wasted cannot be changed, the new one, unfolding in front of us, holds the promise to be the one that could make it all okay.

It’s our choice.

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Good Morning, Father,

I need Your wisdom, Lord.

My friend is a man of extremes and so he is unwise.  His passions often lead him to a limited knowledge, but at the start of each new quest, he immediately handicaps himself by demanding of himself nothing less than his perception of perfection.  He has no concept of how enormous wisdom is and that he has only uncovered the smallest spot. He is a blind man describing an elephant by the hand-sized part he has touched.

My friend is a man of extremes. He desires to be thought of as right more than he hungers to know genuine wisdom. He has not learned that the first step is to relinquish control to You. Furthermore, he requires that he will like what he discovers, so he brings his own measuring tools and preconceived specifications with him on his quest, just to insure everything aligns with his preconceived perceptions. More than anything he wants to be the one to define You, Father. He erroneously believes that his burning desire is all that is needed to open the door. He does not see that he presumes to want You, the Almighty, Sovereign God, to conform to his ability to understand. He cannot see that his folly keeps him confined to his high regard of his own intellect and ability.

My friend is a man of extremes. How do I tell him that wisdom cannot be found in the extremities? How can I show him that wisdom is always wedged deep in the middle, striking a clean but narrow path through the center? How can I tell him, that to find You, Father, he needs to remove himself from the extremes and walk toward You with empty heart and mind, ready to receive rather than instruct? How do I tell him that You reveal wisdom on Your terms, not ours–in Your ways, not ours?

I have been traveling this narrow path toward You for so long, Lord. You well know that sometimes I have rushed forward and made great strides. And sometimes I have spent years standing completely still. All along the way You have been more than patient with me. In those rare, shining moments when You have given me a tiny revelation and a glimpse of the smallest corner of wisdom, I have been struck down in deep and profound humility. I have been stripped of my petty self-realization and thrown to the ground by Your surprises. I am left there, paralyzed by the great truth that You have revealed to me, and the knowledge that I was granted the gift only for my complete obedience and subjugation to Your will, not my own understanding. It is only then that I have realized that the more I learn, the less I know. There is no end and no conclusion. Wisdom is not a destination. Your mysteries cannot be solved mathematically or with logic. Wisdom, by design, is made of an other-worldly element that cannot be analyzed with the limited human mind.

Unfortunately, Father, my friend’s name is Legion. He is only one of many. I don’t know how to tell them.  Grant them Your wisdom, Father that they might begin to know You.

Thank you, Lord,

Your servant,

Meema