Bible meditations

day 20: manna

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 2 Comments
photo credit: galleryhip.com

photo credit: galleryhip.com

They asked, “What is it?” The white, flaky food falling from the sky, available to gather anew every morning. And that became its name – “manna/what is it.” They could not tell you what it was, but they used it and knew that it was provision from God’s hand. It built their covenantal trust in their God who every morning provided just enough for each day for each family.

My former professor, Ed Welch, compares trust in God for future provision to the Israelites’ trust of the daily, future provision of manna. I love that analogy. For I, too, need reassurance every day anew that God will provide all I need. And I, too, cannot always (or often) name what it is that I need, even looking back on something in hindsight. I just know that it’s what I needed, provided from God’s hand, and enough for every day.

It’s a daily practice of trusting God will give all I need. For today, and for the moments of this day. And that there will be a renewed supply tomorrow.

What’s my response? To open up my hands and to gather it. To look for it, and to thank God when it comes. So yesterday I thanked God for the provision of a chat with neighbors at twilight while our children played together; and today I thank God for grace of his forgiveness after losing it in anger at my daughters. It is strength to get up and to show up in my life even when I feel unmotivated or “blah.” Sufficient for each day is its own trouble, and inherent in that promise is that sufficient for its day is its own manna as well.

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Part of the October writing challenge – 31 days of 5 minute free writes. Read more here.

day 12: rest

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment
photo credit: en.wikipedia.org

photo credit: en.wikipedia.org

Rest restores the soul and refreshes the body. How good of our Creator to build a rhythm for rest into our days! Six days of work; one Sabbath rest. Without it, we suffer. Burnout is epidemic in our culture – some of it obviously so, much more silently suffered. We are all tired. Crazy busy. Unfulfilled. Stressed out.

Rest requires that we step off the throne of our universe and admit that we are not in control, indispensable, or unlimited in our resources and strength. 

When was the last time you rested?

What’s keeping you from it now – today – the next five minutes?

Rest as a holy pause makes work more fruitful and reminds me that when I am still, God is still God. Fruitful work leads to rest, and rest leads to fruitful work.

Rest is communion with the holy. What’s holy in your life? It’s your people and God’s Word and His world. Sabbath is a time to reconnect with each. To get outside and soak up creation’s beauty; to stop the busy-ness and talk to the people with whom you share a dwelling; to say no to all the other constant demands and say yes to drinking deep of the fountain of life.

You’ll find invitations like this one with your name on it:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

frenchpressmornings.com

frenchpressmornings.com

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Day 12 of the 31-day writing challenge. Find more here.

Light in our darkness

/ Heather Davis Nelson / Leave a comment
photo credit: Mary Yonkman @ tulipsflightsuits.com

photo credit: Mary Yonkman @ tulipsflightsuits.com

The world was dark, formless, void. Nothing at all but nothing. Our minds cannot comprehend it. But there was the Spirit. Who hovered above the waters. And He spoke, and what was created first? Light. Imagine the symphony playing in heaven while the first rays of light entered creation. Light was preeminent; everything else would follow – unleashed to dance in the spotlight of the Creator.

Fast forward through a few centuries of redemptive history. There has been sin; Israel formed as God’s people; Israel in exile for their rebellion; Israel rescued and returned; and then Israel awaiting Light again. He came humbly this time. Small, in a manger – the Light of the world. He came to die in darkness and shame, taking on the weight of your sin and mine. After darkness of crucifixion, Light returns in resurrection. He is alive!

And now we come to your heart’s story of light. This same divine power exists to create light in your heart that was so full of sin’s darkness. My heart was dark, formless, void before His light came. He spoke Jesus, and began to separate the light from the darkness within me. He spoke light into my darkness so that I could recognize true Light. So that I could see God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6).

My story of redemption is a story of light shining out of darkness. Anytime I reach out in love instead of curl inward in despair or selfish hoarding of resources, light is shining out of darkness. Each time I am able to comprehend, even for a moment, the eternal weight of true beauty found in my Redeemer and I turn away from the false beauty promised by the world, light shines out of darkness. When I take a deep breath and ask for forgiveness from my 4-year-old twin daughters instead of wallowing in shame that I yelled at them (again), light shines out of darkness. Every moment that I remember I am saved not because I was a “good girl,” but despite the fact that I try to be good without God, light shines in my sin-deceived heart.

What about for the darkness of a world broken and grieved around me? Will there be enough light there, too? In my calling as a counselor and a pastor’s wife, I often have a front row seat to life’s brokenness. This past summer our church community underwent grief of tragic proportion in the deaths of a mother and daughter. In the waves of darkness, of questions without answers and grief without limit, even here there was light to be found. I witnessed it when a weeping father told his distraught daughter after sharing the unspeakable news of her mother and sister’s death – “We are Easter people. We are Easter people.” It was the refrain of his heart in the middle of the darkest tragedy, and his words spoke light into my darkness and that of his daughter and that of all who heard.

How can you survive the worst of the worst? Or walk through the darkest of valleys, the middle of the broken, of the mess we have created from our darkness without Light? It is impossible. But herein lies hope – God has made his light shine in our hearts. It is a light that conquers all darkness, even the darkness of death. This is the light that dwells within –

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:4-5, ESV)

The light shone into a world that was empty, void, formless. It shines into hearts that are the same. The Light cannot be overcome by darkness, but it will overcome darkness. What a promise to count on today for you and me as we engage in this same journey in our own hearts and in the lives of those around us.

Five Minute Friday: whisper

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 3 Comments

What a whirlwind of a week! A happy whirlwind: girls returned to preschool on Wednesday and my in-laws moved down to Virginia from New Jersey the same afternoon. I have to admit that I love routine AND I already love having family living locally. For the first time ever in our 8 years of marriage.

Now – for writing this Friday morning, five minutes on a given topic each week. No editing; just writing.

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He has witnessed one of God’s most glorious mountaintop moments: fire coming down from heaven to consume an altar’s sacrifice, proving in the sight of hundreds of Baal worshipers that he is the True God. No wonder Elijah thought God would speak to him in thunder, or whirlwind. His was a big, glorious God who had stolen the headlines with his other “god”-defying powers. Now that Elijah was listening for God to speak to him, he was listening for BIG. 

But that’s now how God spoke. He was in a whisper. In the quiet. Elijah had to wait. To settle down his soul. To lean in close. For the God of the Big is also the God of the intimate. Who whispers to his people to let them know that he is close and to draw them closer to him. Whispering implies intimacy. It requires more intentional listening.

quietIn my bustling whirlwind, do I have time and space and quiet to listen? To lean in to God’s heart – to open up his word and listen to these words of life? Yes, he will meet me amidst the turmoil and the whirlwind, but what he truly delights in with his own? To draw them close and to whisper peace over their souls and into the crevices of our hearts that only he knows how to touch. 

What will he whisper? I don’t know. We don’t know what he said to Elijah. Just that it was in a whisper. And so quiet down and listen. He still speaks. But he won’t compete with the chaos. He waits for you to step away from it.

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beauty in darkness: what’s good about “Good Friday”

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 4 Comments

I had skimmed over the verse countless times in the 30+ years I’ve read and meditated and studied this familiar account. Good Friday is the time to read the crucifixion story. A story of horror turned beautiful. Yet if you’re like me, too often I jump to the “turned beautiful” part without staying with the horror of what Jesus endured. It’s uncomfortable to sit with the events that culminated in the most gruesome of deaths on a Roman cross. But this week – this Holy Week – asks us to do just that. To sit. To see. To hear. Because in the horror, we are saved. We are deserving of all that the King of Glory endured innocently. And we who bear his name are called to endure similar suffering for the sake of love. Love enters into the messy, the broken, even the so-gruesome-you-can’t-bear-to-hear-it and Love takes it. Love endures. It does not run away. It stays. It shows up.

What feels impossible for you to endure today (and yet you must because of Love)? How can Good Friday become truly “good” for you today? What brokenness do you run from in your own heart and in the lives of those around you?

In my calling as a counselor, I often sit with those who have endured stories of abuse that are too difficult to name. And to think that what I have a hard time hearing is what they lived through. Well, that causes you to pause. To pray. To beg for redemption, for healing, for a Justice to make it all right. 

On Good Friday, we are given just that. Not only in the cross, but in the events leading up to the cross. Here’s the verse that stopped me in my tracks this morning (from Matthew 27:27):

Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him.

Do you know how many soldiers are in a battalion? I didn’t either, so I checked the footnote and saw that a battalion is “a tenth of a Roman legion; usually about 600 men.” 600 men. Quite different than movies who portray this portion of the scene with a couple soldiers kicking Jesus around. That’s bad enough, but this has an arena quality to it. 600 soldiers. That’s a very full auditorium hall. And what did they gather to do? Well, read on:

And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him.

Utterly shameful. Shameful if it’s an audience of one, but for these horrors to happen before an arena-size audience of 600? Shame magnified. Shame too great for words. Twice he was stripped of his clothes. In addition to the emotional abuse of this mockery, there was the physical abuse of being “crowned” with thorns and beat on the head with a reed. What is striking is Jesus’ response. Nothing. The one who was God incarnate – who could have called down fire from heaven to devour these fools – stayed still and endured. That is the miracle. The miracle that turns bad into good, abuse into redemption, mockery into honor.

Centuries before, a prophet called Isaiah wrote about this and puts words to the what and the why of all that Jesus endured on “Good” Friday:

Surely he has borne our grief
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed. …
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth …

Because Jesus did not open his mouth when enduring abuse, we can open our mouths and beg for healing and redemption. Healing from our own abuse and from the ways we have abused and oppressed others through our sin – through our brokenness seeking false healings.

In the place of your abuse, there is healing. Because he took the shame for you.

In the place of my sin, there is peace. Because he carried the guilt for me.

In the places where you and I have been silenced, our voice is restored. Because his was silenced this Good Friday.

So go. Walk as one who is healed, who is at peace, who can speak up and speak out and speak of darkness turned beautiful on this most good of Fridays. 

“what’s your story?”

/ Heather Davis Nelson / Leave a comment

The following is the manuscript for a devotional I gave at the conclusion of my church’s week-long women’s Bible study yesterday morning. 

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I’ll never forget the first time I met her. I was a brand new staff member at her church, freshly graduated from seminary, and she was hosting a kids’ vacation Bible school at her gorgeous, historic Philadelphia home. And I’ll admit that I felt intimidated. She was outgoing and funny – clearly “the life of the party.” She leaned over after introducing herself and took me aback with her atypical first question, “So what’s your story?” She later told me that she intentionally asks this question rather than the more common, “So what do you do?” because she finds that typical opening question to be rather off-putting. You’re immediately put on the spot and labeled and categorized based on what you do (or you don’t do). And how many of us feel comfortable claiming our profession as our primary identity? Of course you and I are much more than what we do. The opening, “what’s your story?” captures this so much better.

So I want to pose the same question: what’s your story? My story this morning is of a mom who feels tired with trying to balance mothering twin daughters with the demands and privileges of a job I love as a counselor; and mine is the story of a woman learning to find my voice and seeking to explore my creativity through the art of writing. My story is of a daughter who misses her parents in South Carolina, of a sister who feels too far away from her brothers and their families, of a wife whose husband is a pastor and all the dynamics that this entails. My story is of a woman who longs for summer and spring with all my heart – who still associates summer with “free time” although having preschoolers at home means summer will be the opposite of this. My story is of a friend who wants to do more story-telling and story-listening than tasks accomplished and projects completed.

Studying Romans with my church’s women’s Bible study this year has given each of us a new angle on our story – a new way of understanding our stories – and this story is the best ever told. God’s story, or the shorthand Paul uses throughout the book “gospel.” Let’s think of the thesis in Romans 1:16-17 –

for I am not ashamed of [God’s story], for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in [God’s story], the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’

What’s your story when you’ve read and studied Romans? Maybe one of the following –

  •  the story of someone who’s trusted in your own goodness too much and so Romans is a story of being beckoned out of your self-righteous judgment and hypocrisy into the freeing grace of admitting your sin and your need for grace found only in Jesus and HIS perfect goodness
  •  the story of someone who has found grace and power for salvation for the first time – who has found God’s story of grace, forgiveness, and righteousness in Jesus to be THE story your life needs
  • the story of someone who thought your badness was too bad for God – that your rebellion was too much – and God’s story beckons you to come home. To be truthful with where you’ve wandered far from him and to find refuge in grace.
  • the story of someone who’s found Romans to be profoundly and deeply unsettling as you’re confronted with a God who is not as we would make him to be – a God whose character seems harsh or even capricious at times if what Romans says about him is true. So perhaps your story is one filled with questions that feel haunting.

There are parts of my story that fit with all of these scenarios, but I find myself identifying most with the story of my goodness and judgmental heart exposed AND the story of unsettling questions weighing heavy on my heart. Whatever has been stirred up in your story during Romans, don’t leave it here. Don’t end that for the summer.

Maybe you could find a few friends or people you connected with from your table and meet regularly throughout the summer at someone’s home or a park or a coffee shop for the purpose of sharing stories – either your own and/or the stories God tells in His Word. Perhaps you could find a book or resource to read on your own that will help you to grapple with your questions and your story. I’ve brought a few that I would recommend: Extravagant Grace by Barbara Duguid, The Prodigal God by Tim Keller, To Be Told by Dan Allender; Grace for the Good Girl & A Million Little Ways by Emily Freeman; Grace through the Ages  by William Smith and/or Out of the Spin Cycle by Jen Hatmaker as short devotional thoughts. For exploring some of the hard questions raised by Romans, these are two of my favorites: How Long, O Lord? by D.A. Carson and Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by J. I. Packer.

Although WBS ends today, your story doesn’t and neither does the community you’ve found here. Join us for Easter week celebrations – Maundy Thursday, 12pm or 6pm Good Friday service, 9am or 11am Easter Sunday. Help out with CAMP/Camp JR. (and send your kids!); join a community group that meets weekly; if you’re a mom, contact me to be added to the list to be informed of Nurture events and meet-ups throughout the summer.

Live into your story – tell your story – listen to others’ stories. That we may live out the truth of God’s story as seen in Romans more truly through stories of more grace and less judgment, more freedom and less condemnation, more acceptance and fewer barriers to love, more of trusting in God’s goodness for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and less of trusting in our own.

 

Wisdom looks like love

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

Last weekend, I had the privilege of addressing a group of women at Grace Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Virginia, on the vast topic of “wisdom.” I’ve written a bit about that here, and I’m including a few more thoughts on the idea that transformed the way I’ve studied wisdom these past months. Oh, that it would change the way I LIVE out wisdom, too!

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Since Jesus himself is the wisdom of God, looking at his life provides the definition of what wisdom looks like. At every turn, we see love. Jesus sought out the tax collector who was too short to see him and invited himself over to his home; he healed the woman who had been bleeding for years and took away her shame; he forgave the adulterous woman who was about to be stoned; he had compassion on the crowds and miraculously fed them; he loved us to the very extent of love – giving his own life on our behalf, becoming obedient to death itself so that we might live and be restored to God. Jesus was God incarnate, and since God is love, we could say that Jesus is love incarnate. So wisdom and love are inextricably connected. Love is the outflow of true wisdom that comes from God, flowing out of a heart depending on Jesus.

This really gets me. I can live in my head so much as a woman who loves words – reading them and writing them and pondering ideas. My profession as a counselor calls me to discuss wisdom and love outside of the actual situation where one is being challenged to love wisely, and so I can too often stop at the false conclusion that wise insight equals heart change. If you spent a week with me, you would see the gap between what I teach, how I counsel others, and the way I apply wisdom to my own relationships. Too often after giving marriage counsel to a couple in conflict, I come home and do the very things I warned the couple against. I interrupt before listening; get angry too quickly at petty differences; sulk and say “fine” when I’m really anything but; hold onto grudges instead of forgive. Same with parenting. I can explain to a friend that being calm will bring calm to her kids, but the minute my own kids get in the way of what I want (an uninterrupted shower? a peaceful Target trip? quiet in the mornings?), I erupt in anger and yell at them impatiently.

I’ve written a blog series entitled, “Confessions of an angry mom,” about how to bring anger under the control of the Holy Spirit through the power of the gospel of Jesus. And it has helped many others. But I still need these words for myself. I will never outgrow my need for wisdom. For I will always be drawn away from wise love by my foolish, selfish desires. Sin dwelling within me – the old self that died with Christ. And so preaching the good news about “Christ in me, the hope of glory” is essential to practicing wise love daily, being transformed by the One who is Wisdom rather than building up myself through my intellectual understanding of wisdom or analytical relational insights.

for the beauty of Romans 8 (and Valentine’s love)

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 5 Comments

In my church’s women’s Bible study, we have been studying Romans this year. And we have finally arrived at my most favorite of chapters: Romans 8. This morning as I was doing today’s study, I was struck again by the security of LOVE expressed, explained, proclaimed in this chapter. A fitting reflection for Valentine’s week … which is about love, however you feel about that.

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I remember as a daughter feeling so loved by my dad on Valentine’s day because he’d bring home a special treat (usually a box of chocolates, or a stuffed animal) along with my mini-bouquet of flowers and a card. In elementary school, it’s fun to give and exchange dime-store cards. Then middle school hits, and all of a sudden this doesn’t feel like enough. I didn’t want my dad to bring me flowers; I wanted the boy I had a crush on to notice me. My friends’ cards were sweet … but …. just not quite enough. High school intensified these feelings. In college I tried to evade the longing by celebrating friends, having fancy dinners with roommates, pretending we didn’t care that we weren’t romantically pursued. Then, finally, I met the man I was to marry and he romanced me properly on our first Valentine’s together – dinner out at a fancy Italian restaurant in Center City Philadelphia, roses, a Hallmark card … my life was complete.

Or was it? Isn’t it true that in many ways, my life was already complete by being privileged to know the security of my Dad’s love for me since I was a girl? And going  even further, isn’t it true that my life was the most complete it could be from the time I became God’s daughter, forever secure in Christ?  I think as I reflect on Romans 8 this morning, I draw a similar analogy to Valentine’s Day memories. I was always securely loved, but I wavered in my feelings attached to this love as the years ebbed and flowed. In various seasons, I desired a different expression of this love. And that’s part of how we’re created. There is a desire for romantic love – for married love – and at it’s best, it’s meant to reflect God’s love in the deepest human way possible. Which means that even if you feel brokenhearted, jilted, betrayed, disappointed, or lonely during this annual reminder of what you don’t have in the way of romance, you can take refuge in the ultimate love that romance is (at best) a fleeting reflection of. You, too, can enjoy the real thing. Not that it eases the pain or disappointment – don’t hear me saying that what you feel isn’t real. It is incredibly real, and God wants you to come to him with all of it. Not to receive a candy-coated “my love is better!” sort of flippant response, but to receive the comfort your heart needs – a comfort that leaves room for your pain and validates it. A love that comes with its own set of promises, too.

Romans 8 for those who take refuge in Christ by faith is a cascade of promises for us. Not only do we belong – adopted into God’s own family – but we have hope for present day suffering. Hope that sustains us when faced again with the stubbornness of my own selfishness or the brokenness of this world where humans are trafficked, children are abused, marriages fall apart. Hope makes us go on, and hope makes us groan for more.

And not only do we have hope, but we have the promises that no one can be against us; that the only one left to condemn us [Christ] is actually pleading our case continually as he intercedes for us; that nothing and no one can ever, ever, ever, EVER separate us from the love of Christ. But don’t take my word from it. Read it here for yourself in Romans 8:37-39 – and be comforted, wherever you find yourself today, that there IS a lover who will never leave you, betray you, give up on you … no matter what. This is better than the best, sweetest, poetic Hallmark card. Read it … believe it … savor it!

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

when God’s wrath becomes beautiful

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 4 Comments

Yesterday I taught our women’s Bible study on the passage of Romans 1:18-32. It’s a tough passage. Nothing easy or pleasant or (at first glance) comforting here. The theme is God’s wrath revealed against human sin. And yet it comes not in fire and brimstone but in a gradual giving over to what our hearts desire. That’s what’s terrifying about it. There are four stages of this “sin anatomy” found here:

1. Worship exchange (verses 18-22) – Although evidence of God’s beauty exists around us in creation and within us in the form of eternal longings that can’t be satisfied by the world and a conscience, we suppress this and worship Beauty rather than its Author.

2. Truth exchange (verses 24-25) – Unmoored from a relationship with God, it’s easy to believe lies rather than truth. And it’s the only way my idolatrous worship can be supported – that I believe lies that arise from empty/futile/pointless thinking and a darkened heart. The darkness supports the lies and the lies build the darkness. To the point that I call evil good and good evil. It’s also evidenced in my guilt dysfunction – I feel guilty for what I shouldn’t, but fail to feel guilty for what I should.

3. Relationship exchange (verses 24, 26-27) – Inevitably, this leads me into using people around me to get what my heart craves (and worships) rather than lovingly serving them as fellow made-in-God’s-image beings. Sexual sin is a vivid example of this, and Paul does not skirt around this issue in Romans. Lest we begin to think we can judge another because “I don’t struggle with that …”

4. Identity exchange – This is the deepest descent, the natural place we end up when first starting with exchanging God’s glory for creature and creation glory. I become what I practice, and the sin I dabbled in now owns and defines me. “Murder” is listed side by side with what follows, and all of us are caught in the net of practicing the unrighteousness that justly deserves God’s wrath:

  • gossips
  • slanderers
  • God-haters
  • insolent
  • haughty
  • boastful
  • inventors of evil
  • disobedient to parents
  • foolish
  • faithless
  • heartless
  • ruthless

When honest, we are left in despair by the end of this chapter in Romans. Where is the hope for any of us or for the world? And what do you do with this? Apparently, one common temptation would be to (still) try to self-justify and use this chapter to judge others, for Paul launches into the following warning at the beginning of chapter 2:

Therefore, you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

But, thanks be to God, Romans doesn’t end with chapter 1, or even after chapter 2, or 3. [It gets more bleak before it gets better.]

For what all of this is leading to is the beauty of the great gospel exchange. In which God loved us so much that he was willing to enter into our messy world, messy because of us – corrupted by our fall from created intent – sent his very own Son, Jesus, to do the unthinkable. To exchange HIS holiness for our sin; to exchange HIS righteousness for our unrighteousness; to exchange HIS perfect record as the holy and beloved Son of God for our record stained with sinful idolatry – and pay what we deserve. The price of God’s wrath, which he alone experienced in all its furor on the cross. And the good news doesn’t stop there. Not only is God’s wrath paid for, but we are given Jesus’ life in exchange for our own – his beauty for our shame. And this is what we have been craving all along. All of our attempts to exchange glory for idols are merely attempts to run away from/cover/hide/escape the gaze of the all-knowing God, from whom we cower in fear because we know we aren’t worthy. But God, even in revealing his wrath, provides hope for rescue.

And this is how God’s wrath becomes beautiful for the one who is hidden in Christ through faith. This is the only way I could teach on such a topic yesterday and not leave in despair and hopelessness. I know that there is good news; but the good news implies that there is bad news. God’s wrath is real, but as a Christian, I will never have to feel its reality because Jesus took it all. This makes me weep for the mercy I’ve found … and this invites me away day after day after day to worship the Beautiful One instead of his gifts.

watering plants and finding wisdom

/ Heather Davis Nelson / Leave a comment

This will not come as a surprise to those of you who know Seth and me. Plants are an endangered species at our home, whether inside or outside. The past few summers, my dad generously helped us to landscape our front bed – meaning, we picked out a few “hearty” plants and bushes at Lowe’s, and I watched as he planted them, and I listened to his advice about watering them daily (twice in the heat of summer), fertilizing them, mulching them. And I have tried. Promise, Dad! We even bought a lawn sprinkler this year to water the little planties for 30 minutes at a time (or two hours once when I forgot to turn it off. Hello, high water bill).

But after months of diligent watering, we unintentionally took a few weeks “off.” We went on vacation, and thankfully it rained, and then I stayed on vacation from watering our plants. And then a week or two later, I noticed that they looked a bit wilty. Like this photo:

By the time I noticed, I scrambled to find the hose and began watering like mad, enlisting my two favorite little gardeners to come with me. I watered them until the soil looked saturated, hoping against hope to somehow make up for the lost watering time with some extra TLC that could be retroactive.

And that’s when it hit me. That what I was trying to do with my garden is what I often do with pursuing wisdom. I go a long time without nurturing my relationship with God in prayer, Bible study, and community – and then when the need for wisdom arises, I try to take a crash course in it overnight. It rarely works like that. Wisdom is the fruit of a walk with Christ. Just as in watering my plants, it’s easier for me to know when my heart has not been “watered” regularly than if it has been. If I’m daily watering my plants, I won’t notice much growth – it’s slow, steady, constant. However, if I miss a few days in the sweltering heat of the summer, then it will be almost immediately obvious.

What a picture for me of my need to daily seek God’s face, to ask him to reveal my pride that hinders me from obtaining wisdom, and come to prayer, His Word, and church to water my thirsty heart.