WATCHWORD:
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. Proverbs 11:2
In his pride the wicked man does not seek him; in all his thoughts, there is no room for God. Psalm 10:4
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 1 Corinthians 13:4
Meditation:
The father stood on the high dive platform at the crowded public swimming pool. His young son sat on the edge of the pool, staring admiringly at his father. His eyes widened as his father waved, and then launched himself into what he hoped would be a wonderful dive to impress his son. Somewhere between the platform and the water all went wrong, and he hit the water with a mighty belly-flop that echoed across the pool. The crowd laughed and whistled at the show. The young boy clapped and squealed at what he considered to be a wonderful daredevil performance by his father.
His father, overwhelmed with humiliation and struggling to regain his breath, made his way to the pool edge where his son sat. If you were watching you could almost imagine the young boy saying, “do it again daddy!” The daredevil would not be doing it again.
Ah, pride, tis’ a wonderful thing, it sneaks into so much of what we do. Often, we set out to do something with all good intentions but somewhere in the mix, deep in our being, the issue of impressing others rears its ugly head.
What is the saying? “Pride goes before the fall” or the dive. On Sunday, I was inspired to write two meditations for WATCHWORD. Oh, they were wonderful, deathless prose to impress even the most scholarly theologian. So well done that I said to my Carol, “here, read this.” Yes, she was impressed and I was proud. Oh, yeah.
The next morning, yesterday, I launched myself off the high dive! Did a perfect half-gainer into a…belly-flop! What happened to those files? Where are those wonderful meditations? They were nowhere to be recovered! What a sad day it was. At the last minute, I did something I vowed I would never do, I repeated a previous WATCHWORD.
Do you know what they say about lightning never strikes twice in the same place? Wrong! Later, yesterday morning I reconstructed one of those meditations, and I was fairly impressed with the result. I saved it and when I returned from an errand, it had disappeared, nowhere to be recovered.
The meditation you are now reading, I hope, is the third rendition, except now I must address the obvious topic…my own pride and what is going on with my computer. I mean, what the heck!
George MacDonald, in his book Life Essential, writes that “the man who is proud of anything he thinks he has reached, has not reached it. He is proud only of myself. If he had reached, he would have begun to forget. He who delights in contemplating whereto he has attained, is not merely sliding back, he is already in the dirt of self-satisfaction.” Which, he concludes, is pride, and outside the blessings of God.
This is what I have learned from this experience: For me, personally, I need to get back to writing for the Glory of the Lord. To following those moments of inspiration that seem to flow from morning devotionals and prayer. I have gotten away from that.
For you, the reader, the same thing applies. Those inspirations that come to us through our prayer-life and our devotional readings should lead us into a deeper and closer walk with our Lord.
Completely apart from technological failure, or failure on my own (heaven help me), there is something about this whole episode and the topic that deserves more attention in the future. For now, I think I will stop and surrender the whole thing to the Lord, before I lose what I have written, again.
I will close with this. I believe inspiration is communication from the Lord. I believe the Lord speaks to each of us in so many different ways, languages, actions, and, yes, those unexpected things that happen to us on our way; those things we find on our way to discovering something else. Of the 154 meditations that have appeared on WATCHWORD, to date, most, if not all, were born of inspiration from our Lord. Do you believe in prayer? I sure do. Amen
A bit of Prose from LAUDAMUS, Forwarded by Beth Newcomer:
So let us praise the incomplete,
the half-made-up, the left undone,
what’s underbaked, what’s scarce begun,
the set-aside, not-yet-concrete.
Let’s laud what’s left unsaid or dropped,
the barely finished, still to come,
to be announced, to be revealed,
still-in-production, uncongealed—
and praise, for all that, what’s to do
and what’s ahead: the yet-unplanned,
the things we’ve always said we’d do
and what we never thought we would,
and what we never thought we could—
ignoring what we knew we should
and didn’t, never found the time
and left aside, what we omitted.
Here’s to the things that didn’t fit,
that made no sense, that didn’t rhyme
or quite serve the meter, what
we cast away, failed to commit.
So praise the ones who let things lie,
not bringing to completion all
that seemed so necessary once,
and proved irrelevant in time.
A formula to relax and be at peace even with the left undone.
Morning Prayers:
Lord, grant me tenacious winsome courage as I go through this day. When I am tempted to give up, help me to keep going. Grant me a cheerful spirit when things don’t go my way. And give me the courage to do whatever needs to be done. In Jesus’ name,
Father, thank you for intervening in my life and allowing me to have a personal relationship with you. Thank you for your love for me today and forever. Thank you for the blessings you’ve given me, my family, my friends and all those in need. Help us use those blessings to bless others. May I live a life of true joy as I see you at work around me today! In Jesus’ name. Amen.
