Thought for week ending 1 August

 James 3:17-18

¹⁷ But the wisdom from above is first of all pure.  It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. It shows no favouritism and is always

sincere. ¹⁸ And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.

When reading this couple of verses from the book of James, it refers to qualities that seem scarce in many circles in this day and age.

We see and hear a variety of politicians on our tv news programmes at this time in our history and there seems to be few that seek the centre ground, few that seem to take the safe option.  There seems to be more of these heads of state and heads of political parties that are choosing a more radical or extreme direction.  Our reading today begins with the sentence ‘the wisdom from above is first of all pure’.  If we assume that these elected leaders possess some sort of wisdom, even if it only exists in their own minds, could we possibly surmise that the wisdom of any of them could be regarded as pure, and by pure, I mean sinless, absolute, untainted or genuine?  Could Trump, Putin and Netanyahu ever be viewed as ‘peace loving, gentle at all times and willing to yield to others’?  

A thesaurus tells us that alternative ways of describing wisdom might be intelligence, understanding, astuteness and good judgement.  The principles outlined in today’s reading are principles that would improve all levels of society and are principles we need to adopt in our daily lives when we have decisions or choices to make which are more likely to result in peace rather than conflict.

If wisdom given from God is pure, where might the flawed varieties of wisdom we witness from the world’s elected leaders come from?  We live in an increasingly sinful world with an ever-increasing number of interests and fads that have no connection to God in the slightest.  Children are not getting to hear the bible stories we heard when we were their age.  God is getting squeezed out of today’s society and this has not just happened by accident or evolution, it has the planning and objectives of the evil one written all over it.

But the day will come when Jesus will return, and every knee will bow, and our hope is built on nothing less.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, we thank You that Jesus is the power of God and the wisdom of God and that in him, there is no confusion or inconsistency.  We know that the enemy likes to bind us up in confusing webs of lies, fear, and doubt.  May we resist the wiles of the devil and keep our eyes focused on Christ alone.  Help us live our lives in ways that demonstrate our wisdom comes from above.  May our lives reflect the pure, gentle and merciful nature of Jesus to all those whose lives we touch, in Jesus’ name, Amen

(with thanks to knowing-jesus.c