Wisdom For Beginners (Part 3)

Wisdom For Beginners (Part 3)Sirach 2:4-6 “Accept whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient. For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.”I thought I would continue on in Sirach and cover the whole Wisdom for Beginners Section. It’s interesting because today, I was going to use the Message translation. However, It is not great about numbering the verses; it gives more of a range, and I wanted to let you know exactly what verses I was using. I went on biblegateway.com and it happened to be set for Revised Standard Version (RSV). This translation does not call this section “Wisdom for Beginners,” It calls it “Duties toward God.” I like the first title better so I am glad I started out with the Message Translation!This verse begins with “Accept whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient.” That first part is very broad and very difficult. It is not easy to accept whatever is brought upon you. Especially if what is brought upon you is different than what you thought would be happening. If you prayed for children and yet you have been unable to have them, this is very difficult to accept. If you prayed for a promotion at work and yet you didn’t get it, that is very difficult to accept as well. I can see how it would be wise to accept whatever is brought upon us and yet I wish it gave a bit more instruction. This is one of those times when we need to look at the whole verse and not just part of it. I will explain how and why it is so important to accept whatever is brought upon you in a few minutes.First, let's look at the rest of this first sentence. It tells us to be patient in changes that humble us. This is really not easy. I looked up what “changes that humble us meant,” and this is what I found. "Things that humble you" means things that make you realize you are not as important or special as you thought. For example, you might describe an experience as humbling if you work with talented people and feel a sense of awe or admiration. Here are some other examples of things that can humble you: Seeing people be positive about life when they have little, finding someone's heroism humbling, being rejected from jobs and realizing you need to start at the bottom, realizing that your charisma doesn't always cut it in a business, realizing that you need to improve your knowledge base. Do you see why I said this can be really hard. Patience is a virtue that most of the world needs to grow in. It is not one of the easier virtues. Well, I am not sure there are any easy virtues, but most of us struggle with patience. Especially in this fast-paced world we live in. We always want to be going somewhere fast.Also, any kind of change is really hard. However, if it is a good change, it is a little easier. For instance, if you are moving to a house you really like or a job you really like. Those are both good changes and so it makes the difficulty of moving easier because you know you will be happier in the long run. However, changes that humble us aren’t always good changes. They may be good for us in the long run, but they certainly don’t feel good at the moment.So, how do we accept whatever comes our way and be patient with the changes that humble us? This is where the next part of the verse comes in. It says, “For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.” The first part doesn’t tell us how to do it, but it does tell us why we should do it. “For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation.” We need to accept what comes our way because God is testing us and helping us grow into the person we are supposed to be.  When gold is tested in the fire, it is melted down to separate it from any other metals or impurities. How does that relate to us? God might be helping us to separate from other false Gods, idols, or any other things that might be getting in our way of being closer to Him. Humility is a great way to grow closer to the Lord! If we are humble, then we realize that all we have is because of God. We give Him all the glory. However, often, we put other things above God, and we crave all the things of this world instead of craving the Lord and all He has to offer us. Also, when we are not humble, we can think that all we have is because of us. We might think we are successful because of our good fortune. We might think we are the reason for all we have.This is dangerous thinking because if we think we don’t need God, we will stop inviting Him into our lives and into our situations, and that is when things get really hard. The last line of this verse says, “Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.” That right there is the answer we have been looking for. The first part of that line helped us to see why we need to go through what we need to go through. Gold is tested in fire, and we are tested through the furnace of humiliation. This can be very painful at times, and yet it is so necessary if we are going to become the person God wants us to be. However, that doesn’t tell us how we are supposed to accept the things that come our way, or be patient when things humble us.This is found in the very last sentence. “Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.” If we want to do what we are being asked to do in this verse, we have to Trust in the Lord. We need to trust that He will do what He says He will do. We need to trust that He loves us as much as He says He does. Trusting in the Lord isn’t always easy. It can be hard to trust in what you can not see. However, I am willing to bet if you look back at your life, you will be able to see the Lord working. You will see times when life was hard, and yet you made it through and have no idea how. It was because of God. You will see times when you or your loved ones were sick, and the Lord healed them. You will see times when you thought all was lost, and yet God saved you. It is hard to believe in that which we can’t see, but when we can, it will change our lives!St. Augustine said, “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” How great would it be to go through life seeing amazing things happen just because we believed they would happen? The verse also said to make straight your ways and hope in Him. This can help us through hard times because if we are doing things that are wrong in the eyes of God, then we are blocking the graces we could be getting from Him. We can trust in the Lord and also place our hope in Him. Hope in the fact that He cares about us and that He will answer our prayers. We can hope in Him because He is our Father, and He will always do what is best for us. He knows us, and He knows what is truly best for us. He wants more for us than we could ever imagine. We can place our hope in that!Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we want to trust you and place our hope in you, please help us. We want to accept whatever comes our way and be patient in those things that humble us. Please show us how. We love you so much Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you want to come to the retreat next weekend, I need to know by the end of today. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email [email protected]. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Prepare for the worst, expect the best.” www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio training about inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace