Wiser than Solomon

There’s nothing new under the sun, as Solomon wisely noted in the training manual for his royal staff (the Book of Ecclesiastes).

I keep telling folks I’m not writing anything really new here. I’m just rehashing stuff from centuries ago. Sure, I use a different language and a different set of cultural symbols, but it’s the same truth the wisest scholars of ancient times could have told in their own context.

So the folks who tend to like my writing aren’t seeing anything new. Okay, so maybe it’s news to the conscious mind, but not new to the heart. The reason folks keep reading this blog is — I hope — that their heart simply confirms a measure of what their eyes read. All we can do is plug into something that stood before Creation.

A few of the folks who read my blog also talk to me in meat space. I can’t guess whether it’s any gauge of how the rest of you are doing — unless you post or email comments to me — but it seems the otherworldly priority viewpoint is the hardest thing for folks to absorb.

I don’t pretend there is nothing important in this world. Nothing of this world matters. What really matters is how you respond to events beyond your control, whether it’s from the heart or not. If you approach all these worldly events from the otherworldly priorities, if you attempt to read in them the moral character of God, most of them make more sense.

Most people are going to be fooled. For example, you can bet that the name “United States of America” isn’t going anywhere. It’s almost certain that label will be applied to some political entity long after the meaning has changed so much it’s unrecognizable. Depending on how you look at it, we are already there, but no one in our government is honest enough to ditch the label. So even though the USA is nothing like it was supposed to be according to the Constitution, we keep using the title and pretend we obey it.

So something attached to that name will be around for a very long time. Yet it’s painfully obvious we are passing through a time when things are sure to change dramatically, generally for the worse. There will be tipping points along the path that mean unspeakable pain and misery for most folks, yet somehow a certain influential minority will continue to believe nothing important has changed. This applies to a lot of other governments around the world; it’s the sign of the times.

At the same time, some things will improve. That’s just the way it goes in our world. I don’t pretend to know the facts in advance. I’m not smarter than you, and I don’t read things better than you. Some of you know facts and details behind all this that I don’t know. But I do know how to read some portion of what my heart knows. My heart knows enough for me to be right where God intends me to be, and when He intends it. My heart knows how to let stuff in this world go and focus on His glory.

For all of his grand insight, Solomon still did some really stupid shit. Somewhere between his head and heart was a serious disconnect. None of us is Solomon, but we can do a lot better job with our role in God’s Creation.