May 12 Praying for Wisdom

I Kings 3:9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours.

Smith says that "Wisdom is only acquired through experience, thought, and reflection." Well, we all have lots of experiences, but the experience by itself does not necessarily teach us anything. It is only as we debrief, or rehearse the experience observing what happened, how we responded to it and the results of those actions that we can learn something or gain wisdom that we can then apply to the next situation.

The problem is that we too often live such busy lives there is little or no time for reflection. And we feel good about it...the busyness, virtuous even. We may complain about it, but I just heard that there are actually people who thrive on complaining about how busy they are. It is as though their identity and value is wrapped up in their busyness, and they need to complain or tell others so they can be affirmed or supported.

How sad is that!!! One thing I have noticed over the last few days is that people sure do find their value in all the wrong places - in money, in looks, in busyness, in other people, in a degree or a job....forgetting that all of those situations are temporary. Only our relationship with God will last. And His love alone determines our value; He considered us worth paying the greatest price for us, the blood of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, He ,Who cannot lie, has promised never to leave us nor forsake us. Now who else can make and keep that promise?

Anyway, I don't think we do enough reflection in general. That's why we find ourselves back in the same old place, repeating the same old mistakes, one more time. If we spent more time, even daily, reflecting through the day's events and what we learned, that knowledge would stick and turn into wisdom. When we do not rehearse things - words, events, even people's names, we fail to transfer them from short term to long term memory, and their value is lost. Wonder if that is whey there is so much emphasis on meditation, on storing or hiding God's Word in our hearts.