What Word Of Wisdom
Does God Have For You?
It is “funny”, as the saying goes, but “interesting” to be more exact, how age affects one’s view of time and the passage of time. When we were children and youths, we repeatedly said things like, “I can’t wait for. . . Christmas, or, my birthday, or, to get my driver’s license, or to graduate.” Or, “I wish. . . Christmas would come, or, my birthday would get here.” If, however, we had living grandparents who had “been around the block” a few hundred times and knew from experience what life was really like, we perhaps heard them say things like, “Don’t be so impatient! Don’t wish your life away! Life goes fast enough as it is. It’s no fun getting old.”
When my late wife was still able to go out and do things before her MS had crippled her up and curtailed her activities, I took her out one morning for breakfast. Near us two elderly couples were sitting, enjoying one another’s friendship and their breakfasts. They were talking rather loudly, so my wife and I could easily hear what they were saying. Then, at one point in their conversation one of the elderly heavy-set husbands said to the others, “You Know! These are supposed to be our golden years! They are more like our rusting-out years!”
I guess, my dear blog reader, it is not so funny after all about time and the passage of time. It is not something to make light of or to take for granted.
Speaking of time and the passage of time, how are things going at this time in your life? Are you good, because everything in your life is “okey-doke”? Or, has the COVID-19 pandemic gotten you down? Are you quarantined? In self-isolation? (Healthy, I hope, and not infected with the “invisible enemy”.) Are you facing financial problems? You’re not infected with the virus, but are you suffering from some other kind of ailment? Are you going through miserable days of sickness or pain, and perhaps trying to wait out the days until you can have a serious surgery, just hoping that the surgery will restore your health, so you feel better? Are you lonesome, having lost your spouse, family and friends? Are you grieving with a broken heart over a busted marriage, or, a dysfunctional family, or, a relationship that turned sour or never materialized?
What might your present time in life be like? Good? Or, have you seen better days? When we are going through difficult days and times of trouble, we are often tempted to think that our life was so much better in the past than it is in the present. We can begin to lament, “What happened to the good old days? They were so much better!”
That kind of a feeling harmonizes with the wisdom of God written in Ecclesiastes 7:10:
Do not say, “Why is it that the former days were better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this. (NASB)
My blog reader, when you look back on your life from your present viewpoint, what was so good about your good old days? Might you be thinking? “Well, we were younger, stronger, full of energy and vitality, more beautiful, better looking?” Or, “we were in love, dating, happy, thrilled with our relationship, then became newlyweds whose minds had lots of dreams, ambitions and goals?” Or, “we were more prosperous, financially secure, with plans for retirement trips and enjoying the good life that our income would make possible?” Or, “we were healthier, more agile, without aches and pains, able to get around, work around the house, and do the things we enjoyed doing?” Or, “I had my loved ones?” Or, what would you, dear reader, like to add to the list of what was good about your good old days?
When you begin to lament that your former days, the good old days, were better than what your present life is like, you are not speaking from wisdom, as God’s divinely inspired, and especially gifted, wise man Solomon said in the verse to follow. For you are failing to consider the work of God. All things are in God’s hands. His almighty, immutable, unchangeable will is at work in all things in your life. First Corinthians 12:6 says, “God works all in all.” Or, as Solomon also said in Ecclesiastes 9:1 (NASB), “. . . righteous men, wise men, and their deeds are in the hand of God.” Since all things that happen in your life are in. and from, the hand of God, your past good old days were the work of God in your life and your present days are the work of God in your life. So, are you speaking wisely when you say God was working well in your life in the past, but he is not working well in your life at the present time? To talk that way would be foolish of you, would it not be?
Look now at what wisdom Solomon also wrote in verses 13 & 14 of Ecclesiastes 7 (NASB):
13 Consider the work of God,
For who is able to straighten what He has bent?
14 In the day of prosperity be happy,
But in the day of adversity consider--
God has made the one as well as the other
So that man will not discover anything that will be after him.
Yes, my blog reader, consider the work of God. What God has bent, you cannot straighten. What God has ordained to take place in your life, you cannot change. It was, and is, and will be, just as God ordained it. Your good old days were decreed by God, and your present days that are not so good were decreed by God.
This being true, what grain of wisdom can you rightly take from this? If you are wise, you will accept what God brings into your life. As Solomon said, in the day of prosperity be happy. Enjoy the good days while you have them! But, on the other hand, if you are going through days of adversity, accept the fact that God has made your present days of adversity just as he made the good old days of your prosperity. Just as God made the good old days work for your good, so he is making these days of adversity work for your good. And another grain of wisdom for you to digest is that you cannot discover what is yet to come. You do not know what your future will bring. You must wait to see what the Lord will bring about for you – more good days or more bad days.
Let us suppose that your future will bring some more bad days. If so, here is something for you to ingest, even though it will not go down well. Sometimes in life days of adversity can go on and on and from our human viewpoint never end. That is a very heavy cross to bear for anyone. I saw my late wife go through that – twenty years-worth of adversity that just kept going from bad to worse. Here is another example of that: I am thinking of a very elderly woman who was in the nursing home in which my late wife became confined. That poor woman was deaf, blind, could not communicate much to speak of, was completely immobile, and when she was not in bed, she was laid out in a stretcher-like wheelchair and wheeled out to a sunroom of sorts where a television was playing. There she laid until it was time to put her back in bed. The staff managed to feed her somehow, not much, but enough to sustain her. That was the life she had day after day after day. Not too long, as I recall, after my wife became a resident there, this woman had her 100th birthday. Time passed. Then I learned from my wife the woman had her 101st birthday. Then her 102nd, and her 103rd, and her 104th, and at long last, literally, her 105th birthday. What are God’s reasons for that kind of a cross that leaves a person lie so helpless with a life so hopeless for so long a time we will never know nor be able to grasp during our life under the sun. Those reasons lie within the hidden will of God that we cannot fathom until we are face to face with God in glory. Then we will come to understand such things fully.
Yes, my reader, you must recognize that sometimes bad days can linger on and not let up. Who knows, only God knows, what may be in store for you, and whether you yourself may become such a longtime sufferer. An accident may happen, and you are crippled for life. A surgery may not turn out as it was supposed to turn out, and you are disabled or afflicted with some kind of a physical malady that hinders and inhibits you for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, such bad things happen to Christians, as well as to the heathen non-Christians. You hope, and surely pray, such a turn of events would not happen to you. As a Christian you have God’s gracious promises to deliver you from all evil. That day will come when he takes you home to heaven. But in the meantime, until that day comes, what word of wisdom does our Lord have for you, in addition to praying and trusting in him that he is doing what is best for you? At such a time when your cross is heavy that word of wisdom is the words of Jesus, who suffered so very much and went to the cross to save you eternally: “If anyone wishes to follow after me, let him deny himself and pick up his cross and follow me.” Yes, you may just have to set aside what is your will for yourself to accept from God’s hand what is his will for you – the suffering of a cross with its misery and pains.
Here is another word of wisdom for you as well: Do not think the days of adversity you may be going through are so much worse than what your life was like before. For you do not know what God is working for you behind the scenes. Time will tell. Being a Christian believer in Jesus, you can be assured of this much: whatever he is working unbeknown to you, it is for your good. And who knows, only God does, but what he is working may turn out to be in the days ahead far better than what your good old days had been. This being possible, stop looking back sadly at what had been and start looking up to see what yet may be. Never doubt what God can be doing for you. The best may be still to come!
Take the life of Joseph, for example. He was the favorite son of his father Jacob. He was given special recognition, kindness and favors far greater than those of his eleven brothers. He was so well treated that his brothers hated him for it. Joseph’s good days abruptly came to an end when his brothers’ hatred of him boiled over into a plot to murder him. Having second thoughts about that, they sold him into slavery instead, to make some money off of him. Suddenly the days of Joseph’s adversity began. He found himself a slave in Egypt. But God was working behind the scenes, blessing everything that Joseph set his mind to do and that his hands touched. He quickly became the overseer of all that his master Potiphar had. But that ended when Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of sexually assaulting her. To make his life as bad as it could get, Potiphar threw him into prison. But again, really continuing actually, God was working quietly behind the scenes for Joseph’s good. God gave him the special gift of interpreting dreams, first the dreams of Pharaoh’s baker and cupbearer. Through that God brought Joseph before Pharaoh to interpret Pharaoh’s two dreams that foretold God’s plans for seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. When Pharaoh discovered Joseph’s gift for interpreting dreams as no other man could do and his genius for administration, Pharaoh made Joseph prime minister of Egypt, second in command only to Pharaoh himself. Indeed, glorious days of prosperity succeeded Joseph’s days of adversity.
The moral of this little story is this: when it pleases God to do so, he can make days of prosperity follow your days of adversity that far surpass what had been your good old days. So, do not give up hope. Keep up your faith in the Lord, for he can do far more than what you ask or imagine (ref. Ephesians 3:20, 21).
But, my blog reader, let us suppose that your days of adversity were to go from bad to worse for you and end in your death. If so, God has another word of wisdom for you: Death in itself is not all bad. Wise Solomon wrote this word of God’s wisdom in Ecclesiastes 7:1, “The day of one’s death is better than the day of one’s birth” (NASB). Now you may wonder, “How can that be?” The answer is this: At birth you are thrust into this world of wickedness, lovelessness, greed, malice, and man’s inhumanity to man; at death, however, you are released from all that terrible evil. And, as for you, a Christian, when death comes, the glorious days of everlasting life in the blessedness of heaven follow! Thanks be to God for his gracious salvation through the redeeming life and death and resurrection of Jesus, his Son, who spoke these words of God’s wisdom for you: ““I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in me will in no way die eternally” (The New Testament, Vivid English Translation).
God’s blessings,
Rev. JC
When my late wife was still able to go out and do things before her MS had crippled her up and curtailed her activities, I took her out one morning for breakfast. Near us two elderly couples were sitting, enjoying one another’s friendship and their breakfasts. They were talking rather loudly, so my wife and I could easily hear what they were saying. Then, at one point in their conversation one of the elderly heavy-set husbands said to the others, “You Know! These are supposed to be our golden years! They are more like our rusting-out years!”
I guess, my dear blog reader, it is not so funny after all about time and the passage of time. It is not something to make light of or to take for granted.
Speaking of time and the passage of time, how are things going at this time in your life? Are you good, because everything in your life is “okey-doke”? Or, has the COVID-19 pandemic gotten you down? Are you quarantined? In self-isolation? (Healthy, I hope, and not infected with the “invisible enemy”.) Are you facing financial problems? You’re not infected with the virus, but are you suffering from some other kind of ailment? Are you going through miserable days of sickness or pain, and perhaps trying to wait out the days until you can have a serious surgery, just hoping that the surgery will restore your health, so you feel better? Are you lonesome, having lost your spouse, family and friends? Are you grieving with a broken heart over a busted marriage, or, a dysfunctional family, or, a relationship that turned sour or never materialized?
What might your present time in life be like? Good? Or, have you seen better days? When we are going through difficult days and times of trouble, we are often tempted to think that our life was so much better in the past than it is in the present. We can begin to lament, “What happened to the good old days? They were so much better!”
That kind of a feeling harmonizes with the wisdom of God written in Ecclesiastes 7:10:
Do not say, “Why is it that the former days were better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this. (NASB)
My blog reader, when you look back on your life from your present viewpoint, what was so good about your good old days? Might you be thinking? “Well, we were younger, stronger, full of energy and vitality, more beautiful, better looking?” Or, “we were in love, dating, happy, thrilled with our relationship, then became newlyweds whose minds had lots of dreams, ambitions and goals?” Or, “we were more prosperous, financially secure, with plans for retirement trips and enjoying the good life that our income would make possible?” Or, “we were healthier, more agile, without aches and pains, able to get around, work around the house, and do the things we enjoyed doing?” Or, “I had my loved ones?” Or, what would you, dear reader, like to add to the list of what was good about your good old days?
When you begin to lament that your former days, the good old days, were better than what your present life is like, you are not speaking from wisdom, as God’s divinely inspired, and especially gifted, wise man Solomon said in the verse to follow. For you are failing to consider the work of God. All things are in God’s hands. His almighty, immutable, unchangeable will is at work in all things in your life. First Corinthians 12:6 says, “God works all in all.” Or, as Solomon also said in Ecclesiastes 9:1 (NASB), “. . . righteous men, wise men, and their deeds are in the hand of God.” Since all things that happen in your life are in. and from, the hand of God, your past good old days were the work of God in your life and your present days are the work of God in your life. So, are you speaking wisely when you say God was working well in your life in the past, but he is not working well in your life at the present time? To talk that way would be foolish of you, would it not be?
Look now at what wisdom Solomon also wrote in verses 13 & 14 of Ecclesiastes 7 (NASB):
13 Consider the work of God,
For who is able to straighten what He has bent?
14 In the day of prosperity be happy,
But in the day of adversity consider--
God has made the one as well as the other
So that man will not discover anything that will be after him.
Yes, my blog reader, consider the work of God. What God has bent, you cannot straighten. What God has ordained to take place in your life, you cannot change. It was, and is, and will be, just as God ordained it. Your good old days were decreed by God, and your present days that are not so good were decreed by God.
This being true, what grain of wisdom can you rightly take from this? If you are wise, you will accept what God brings into your life. As Solomon said, in the day of prosperity be happy. Enjoy the good days while you have them! But, on the other hand, if you are going through days of adversity, accept the fact that God has made your present days of adversity just as he made the good old days of your prosperity. Just as God made the good old days work for your good, so he is making these days of adversity work for your good. And another grain of wisdom for you to digest is that you cannot discover what is yet to come. You do not know what your future will bring. You must wait to see what the Lord will bring about for you – more good days or more bad days.
Let us suppose that your future will bring some more bad days. If so, here is something for you to ingest, even though it will not go down well. Sometimes in life days of adversity can go on and on and from our human viewpoint never end. That is a very heavy cross to bear for anyone. I saw my late wife go through that – twenty years-worth of adversity that just kept going from bad to worse. Here is another example of that: I am thinking of a very elderly woman who was in the nursing home in which my late wife became confined. That poor woman was deaf, blind, could not communicate much to speak of, was completely immobile, and when she was not in bed, she was laid out in a stretcher-like wheelchair and wheeled out to a sunroom of sorts where a television was playing. There she laid until it was time to put her back in bed. The staff managed to feed her somehow, not much, but enough to sustain her. That was the life she had day after day after day. Not too long, as I recall, after my wife became a resident there, this woman had her 100th birthday. Time passed. Then I learned from my wife the woman had her 101st birthday. Then her 102nd, and her 103rd, and her 104th, and at long last, literally, her 105th birthday. What are God’s reasons for that kind of a cross that leaves a person lie so helpless with a life so hopeless for so long a time we will never know nor be able to grasp during our life under the sun. Those reasons lie within the hidden will of God that we cannot fathom until we are face to face with God in glory. Then we will come to understand such things fully.
Yes, my reader, you must recognize that sometimes bad days can linger on and not let up. Who knows, only God knows, what may be in store for you, and whether you yourself may become such a longtime sufferer. An accident may happen, and you are crippled for life. A surgery may not turn out as it was supposed to turn out, and you are disabled or afflicted with some kind of a physical malady that hinders and inhibits you for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, such bad things happen to Christians, as well as to the heathen non-Christians. You hope, and surely pray, such a turn of events would not happen to you. As a Christian you have God’s gracious promises to deliver you from all evil. That day will come when he takes you home to heaven. But in the meantime, until that day comes, what word of wisdom does our Lord have for you, in addition to praying and trusting in him that he is doing what is best for you? At such a time when your cross is heavy that word of wisdom is the words of Jesus, who suffered so very much and went to the cross to save you eternally: “If anyone wishes to follow after me, let him deny himself and pick up his cross and follow me.” Yes, you may just have to set aside what is your will for yourself to accept from God’s hand what is his will for you – the suffering of a cross with its misery and pains.
Here is another word of wisdom for you as well: Do not think the days of adversity you may be going through are so much worse than what your life was like before. For you do not know what God is working for you behind the scenes. Time will tell. Being a Christian believer in Jesus, you can be assured of this much: whatever he is working unbeknown to you, it is for your good. And who knows, only God does, but what he is working may turn out to be in the days ahead far better than what your good old days had been. This being possible, stop looking back sadly at what had been and start looking up to see what yet may be. Never doubt what God can be doing for you. The best may be still to come!
Take the life of Joseph, for example. He was the favorite son of his father Jacob. He was given special recognition, kindness and favors far greater than those of his eleven brothers. He was so well treated that his brothers hated him for it. Joseph’s good days abruptly came to an end when his brothers’ hatred of him boiled over into a plot to murder him. Having second thoughts about that, they sold him into slavery instead, to make some money off of him. Suddenly the days of Joseph’s adversity began. He found himself a slave in Egypt. But God was working behind the scenes, blessing everything that Joseph set his mind to do and that his hands touched. He quickly became the overseer of all that his master Potiphar had. But that ended when Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of sexually assaulting her. To make his life as bad as it could get, Potiphar threw him into prison. But again, really continuing actually, God was working quietly behind the scenes for Joseph’s good. God gave him the special gift of interpreting dreams, first the dreams of Pharaoh’s baker and cupbearer. Through that God brought Joseph before Pharaoh to interpret Pharaoh’s two dreams that foretold God’s plans for seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. When Pharaoh discovered Joseph’s gift for interpreting dreams as no other man could do and his genius for administration, Pharaoh made Joseph prime minister of Egypt, second in command only to Pharaoh himself. Indeed, glorious days of prosperity succeeded Joseph’s days of adversity.
The moral of this little story is this: when it pleases God to do so, he can make days of prosperity follow your days of adversity that far surpass what had been your good old days. So, do not give up hope. Keep up your faith in the Lord, for he can do far more than what you ask or imagine (ref. Ephesians 3:20, 21).
But, my blog reader, let us suppose that your days of adversity were to go from bad to worse for you and end in your death. If so, God has another word of wisdom for you: Death in itself is not all bad. Wise Solomon wrote this word of God’s wisdom in Ecclesiastes 7:1, “The day of one’s death is better than the day of one’s birth” (NASB). Now you may wonder, “How can that be?” The answer is this: At birth you are thrust into this world of wickedness, lovelessness, greed, malice, and man’s inhumanity to man; at death, however, you are released from all that terrible evil. And, as for you, a Christian, when death comes, the glorious days of everlasting life in the blessedness of heaven follow! Thanks be to God for his gracious salvation through the redeeming life and death and resurrection of Jesus, his Son, who spoke these words of God’s wisdom for you: ““I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in me will in no way die eternally” (The New Testament, Vivid English Translation).
God’s blessings,
Rev. JC
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