Bruce Collins, Evangelist

Meditation for the week of October 12, 2008

Proverbs 1:20 Wisdom calls aloud outside; She raises her voice in the open squares.
Proverbs 1:24 Because I have called and you refused, I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded.

Wisdom has called and we have refused! It doesn’t seem logical that anyone would refuse the wise choice or the wise person who could give wise counsel. But Eve did in the Garden of Eden and it has affected all of the rest of us. Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived apart from the Lord, began to worship pagan gods in his old age.. They were gods who did not put him on the throne. They did not speak to him and commend him for asking for wisdom. They did not do him good, instead they led to the dividing of his kingdom. Was this wise? No! Are we wise when it comes to the decisions we make?

Right now, we are reaping the consequences of poor decisions in the financial markets. Short-term gain does not always lead to long-term profits and those who wanted to get rich quick have now thrown this country into economic turmoil. It appears that the wisdom and perspective of those who went through the banking crises of the Great Depression were gone from the decisions being made by banks. Most people with any business wisdom know that when prices are too high, at some point they are going to come down. That is a truism. So now we are seeing the housing market come down and the banks are reaping the consequences of some poor loan choices. But unfortunately, when we make bad choices, we affect more than ourselves. In this case the whole world is being affected.

Because of the war in Iraq, because of the present banking crisis, because of the uncertainty of who our current presidential candidates really are and what they really believe, it would be easy to say, “Let us eat, drink and be merry (Ecclesiastes 8:15).” After all we are just going to die and the generation after us isn’t going to respect what we have done anyway. Solomon, who wrote Ecclesiastes, was quite discouraged when he looked at life after he had quit enjoying the Lord, and he said all was like the wind. It was empty and emotionally vexing.

The Lord tells us that the wise man builds His house or life on a rock and the foolish man builds his house on the sand (Matthew 7:24-27). I don’t know how people survive mentally who think that this life is all a product of time and chance and that when they die, they cease to exist. I am glad that I do not believe that. Some people say I am emotionally stunted and intellectually challenged. But I say that until they can replace the confidence I have in the Lord and His Word with something better, they should just leave me alone. My Rock, the Lord, gives me peace in troublesome times. My Rock assures me of unconditional love. He treats me the same no matter what company He is keeping. He is not partial and He is always the same. He loved me enough to die for me and then He said that He would send the Holy Spirit to indwell me so that I would always know His joy, His presence and have His wisdom. How can anyone top that? It it wasn’t true, I wouldn’t want anyone to take that away from me unless they could prove to me that believing what I believe was harmful to me or to someone around me. And so far nobody has proven that to me.

In these troublesome times, the best part of what I believe is that it really is true. The Lord says in John 14:1, “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me..” I do. Wisdom has cried and I have listened. I am prepared for whatever comes. I hope you are too.

Bruce Collins