Day 124

Judges 19:1–20:48; John 3:22–4:3; Psalm 104:24-35; Proverbs 14:22-24

HAVE YOU EVER gotten excited about starting a new chapter in your life? Maybe you’ve decided to finally go back to school and finish that degree. Or perhaps you’re going to sit down and finally write that memoir. Maybe you want to radically change your health and have decided to train for a marathon. The decision to act is tremendously empowering and inspiring.

You set a date to begin, and you can’t stop thinking or talking about it. You shop for all the things you believe will create the perfect creative environment, or maybe you spend hours reading all the reviews of the best long-distance running shoes. You can barely sleep the night before you begin this new journey.

Then the day arrives, and reality sets in about ten minutes later —this is going to be a long journey, full of very, very hard work. All those books on writing were inspiring to read in preparation, but for some reason, the blank page in front of you won’t write itself. All that shopping for a stylish workout wardrobe and shoes won’t increase endurance or burn calories, so you find yourself plopped in front of the television that evening with a bag of chips, feeling defeated, because the idea of accomplishing something new was far more enticing than actually doing it.

This is addressed in our reading from Proverbs today: “Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty!” (Proverbs 14:23).

The words profit and poverty in this passage are not referring only to financial status. Rather, they refer to abundance and lack. In other words, talking about doing something does not get it done. Planning to do something does not complete it. Reading a book on writing will not make you a writer, and buying the right running shoes will not make you a runner. It is the work involved —the sweat of the thing —that moves you from desire and lack to fulfillment and abundance. This truth touches all places in our lives, including our relationship with God. Desiring to know God and reading books about God will not create intimacy with God, any more than it would with a spouse or loved one. The work is what brings the abundance.

What are the things you need to stop talking about and start working on? Invite God into that question today.

MEDITATION:

O LORD, what a variety of things you have made! In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your creatures.