Honey
January 24, 2006
Eat honey, my son, for it is good; honey from the comb is sweet to your taste.
Know also that wisdom is sweet to your soul; if you find it, there is a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off. – Proverbs 24:13-14, NIV, © 1973, 1975, 1978, International Bible Society
Maybe the problem with some folks who think they are very wise is that they don't eat enough sweets.
I understand the rather obvious problem with that statement, but I wonder if I also might be on to something. Some folks seem to do more snarling than smiling when they encounter great ideas. The lights go on in their minds and out in their countenance. All of the energy that comes from insight is used up in perpetuating their misery.
Sour puss thinking, teaching, and living misses the whole point of wisdom.
Wisdom is sweet. After a long wrestling match with truth - which ought to be as playful as it is dead serious, we emerge with something wonderful, an idea. It rings true with the scriptures and true with the soul and it gathers around it a galaxy of other loose ended ideas which suddenly find an orbit that was there all along, but unnoticed.
Eureka! Serendipity! Spread the honey! How sweet it is!
Do you ever chuckle when you read the bible? If not, I dare say you are missing something.
There you are, pouring over the word of God, brain strain focus is fixed on the meaning of the passage and you turn the page. There in living color is an illustration that rings true. You encounter a mirror of your own emotions, a replay of your own experience, an answer that has eluded you and you get all giggly.
You just got the point. How sweet it is!
The gospel is the wisdom of God and it is good news. There is some bad news mixed in, but only to lead us to the good. Carrots are sweet and corn is really sweet, but a little honey brightens the disposition so much.
No one wants or needs a steady diet of nothing but sugar coating, but blandness is not a characteristic of radical Christianity. I want to be where there is love and life and laughter. That's my honey tree. That is wisdom. That is my faith.