Tag: scripture

The Gambler

Those That SeekLeave a comment

You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run

This past weekend Kenny Rogers passed away. I listened to a lot of country music growing up because that’s primarily what my grandparents liked. It’s strange to me though because I don’t remember a ton of Kenny Rogers in the mix. I can think of a few songs, and I’m sure there were more sprinkled in that I just didn’t know. One that I do remember though was easily his most successful song, The Gambler.

This song is a country music classic, and I pulled it back out this weekend as part of a short retrospective with Hannah in the car. Her choice was Islands in the Stream, a duet he did with Dolly Parton. As I listened to The Gambler for the first time in some years, I couldn’t help but think of it like a proverb. The chorus begins with the lyrics above, and it strikes a very similar tone to wisdom’s discerning eye in proverbs.

The wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way,
but the folly of fools is deceiving. Proverbs 14:8

One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil,
but a fool is reckless and careless. Proverbs 14:16

These two verses from Proverbs 14 get at the same idea that Rogers is trying to communicate through his parable. Opinions on gambling aside, he’s promoting caution and discernment over recklessness and carelessness. What’s brilliant about the narrative of the song (and something quite biblical actually) is that he takes a character whose stereotype is often one associated with negative traits like debt, negligence, imprudence and flips that on its head.

Discernment is something that develops as we mature. For the Christian, it hinges on our relationship with Christ and our reliance on His Spirit. 1 Corinthians 2 tells us that the things of God are revealed by the Spirit and discerned spiritually. Part of discernment is trusting that God is leading, which is not always easy to do or to recognize. The best way that I have been able to understand this is to look back. Discerning what is ahead of us requires us to reflect on how we’ve seen God work in the past. We trust that He is good and that He will act in the future how He has acted in the past. This is the heart of faith.

For some of us, we may not feel like we have seen God show up in the past, so we have to cling to Scripture, which is the account of His actions in history. These actions and words communicate God’s character and nature to us, and in that we have faith.

Prayer and Reflection

How has God shown up in your past? What does the Bible say about who God is? Pray that these things are revealed to you and pray for the faith to trust that he will help you discern your future actions.

Beautiful Things

Those That SeekLeave a comment

Ephesians 1:7-10

7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

This theme is similar to much of what I have covered in other posts, but I want to specifically dig into the idea of unity and how we can better understand what is means that God wants to unite all things.

Unity

It is the revealed mystery of God’s will, His purpose, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth. This is a pretty significant idea in understanding what God is doing and in better understanding who God is. God is about the unity and reconciliation of all things.

When I was in college, my small group leader consistently asked us a question that is still one of the first questions that I try to answer when attempting to understand a passage of Scripture. He would ask, “what does this say about the character and nature of God?” Whenever we read statements made by or about actions ordained by God in the Bible, we know that they are communicating something about who He is. If God’s purpose is to unite all things in Him, then it stands to reason that God is not about causing division. God is about relationship. He’s about pulling the broken in closer to himself and about repairing divisions that sin has caused in our relationship with Him.

To better grasp the idea of what this means, let’s look at the Japanese art of Kintsugi. This tradition takes broken pottery and repairs it into a new work of art by piecing the broken pieces and using a gold, silver, or platinum lacquer to put it back together. The results are stunning. The new piece has a spider web of gold fingers reaching across the ceramic. Some of the best pieces actually look like they were intentionally designed to be that way. Kintsugi stands in contrast to most western traditions, which tend to repair something like this by making it as close as they can to what the original looked like. Kintsugi, on the other hand, uses the broken places of the pottery to create something that is unique and beautiful in its own right. Kintsugi forces you to see beauty in the broken parts of the object. In some ways, this is how I understand what God does with our broken places.

The broken places of our lives are chasms that often keep us from God, but the work that God is doing is much like the work of Kintsugi. He is uniting the broken pieces within us to make something new. He’s using the broken body of Christ on the cross to make us new creations in His kingdom. One of the most amazing parts to this is not just that he is repairing the fractures in both you and me, but in all who believe. He is reconciling the world to Himself through the global church with the help of the Holy Spirit.

What does this say about the character and nature of God? It says that He has a plan and a purpose. It says that He is about reconciliation and about relationships. It says that He is generous with His grace and His forgiveness. God is not about hiding the flaws in our characters, but about reconciling us and healing us so that we are seen by Him as righteous. It’s a system where the brokenness of the body of Christ brings us into relationship with Him. It’s a system of redemption and of love. God is about uniting rather than dividing.

Prayer and Reflection

Think about Kintsugi and what it means that the brokenness is repaired for use and beauty. Where might you be broken? Ask God to repair that brokenness and be reminded that He will view it as something new and beautiful.

I’m reminded of the song from a few years ago, Beautiful Things, by Gungor. Give it a listen.