Odes to Solomon

I ran across this hymn while reading for class and found it so, so beautiful. The first five verses especially really struck me as encapsulating so well why I write, and the rest is just beautifully-written praises of God. We can never praise Him enough!

1. As the occupation of the ploughman is the ploughshare, and the occupation of the helmsman is the steering of the ship, so also my occupation is the psalm of the Lord by His hymns.
2. My art and my service are in His hymns, because His love has nourished my heart, and His fruits He poured unto my lips.
3. For my love is the Lord; hence I will sing unto Him.
4. For I am strengthened by His praises, and I have faith in Him.
5. I will open my mouth, and His Spirit will speak through me the glory of the Lord and His beauty,
6. The work of His hands, and the labor of His fingers;
7. For the multitude of His mercies, and the strength of His Word.
8. For the Word of the Lord investigates that which is invisible, and reveals His thought.
9. For the eye sees His works, and the ear hears His thought.
10. It is He who made the earth broad, and placed the waters in the sea.
11. He expanded the heaven, and fixed the stars.
12. And He fixed the creation and set it up, then He rested from His works.
13. And created things run according to their courses, and work their works, for they can never cease nor fail.
14. And the hosts are subject to His Word.
15. The reservoir of light is the sun, and the reservoir of darkness is the night.
16. For He made the sun for the day so that it will be light; but night brings darkness over the face of the earth.
17. And by their portion one from another they complete the beauty of God.
18. And there is nothing outside of the Lord, because He was before anything came to be.
19. And the worlds are by His Word, and by the thought of His heart.
20. Praise and honor to His name.
    Hallelujah.

(This is an early Christian (specifically gnostic) hymn, from about the second century AD. No, I'm not particularly gnostic, but this hymn doesn't strike me as very gnostic either (yes, I'm basing that on a quick peruse of wikipedia). This version of Odes of Solomon 16 came from The Gnostic Society Library)

Late Night Thoughts

I can't sleep. Too much thinking, too much self-condemnation. One thing God has been showing me lately is the fact that I am sinful, that I can never earn God's love or His salvation. I can never pay back what Jesus did for me on the cross. I am not completely good. It's been brought home to me in various ways over the past week or so, the latest being my complete inability to control my own thoughts, at least when it comes to my stories.

My stories are something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I was struggling with them about a month ago and I heard God say, "I know you're struggling with this, and the desire in you to create has become corrupted. But I want to use this gift you have for good, for my plan, and right now I'm just cleansing that part of your soul so I can do that." I gave all my stories to Him, one by one. A few weeks ago I couldn't sleep and God told me, "Write. Write." I wrote the beginning of a story that has been bouncing around in my head for a while, but different than I've ever written before: with the knowledge that the story is coming from God and I am merely the instrument used to have the story written down, listening prayerfully for every word and sentence I should write, not planning out the story ahead of time. That was the plan, anyway. It's been so, so difficult. The temptation to just think about the story, to savor what might happen and the experiences the characters will have without writing it out, to just keep it all trapped in my mind, is so, so strong, and I've given in to it so much since I started. I've failed God so often. I am sinful. I've been prideful and obsessive about what I've written, what I could go on to write. I don't know how to do this in a godly way. I'm up so late because I was writing, even though God wasn't telling me to. It's so easy to confuse God's call and obsession. I pray as I write this that God will show me what His will is for this story that I write, for the others still in my mind, and that He will give me the strength to do what He wills with this story. I pray for wisdom, for knowledge of what I should do and what God's will is. Most of all, I pray for God to be with me and comfort me and strengthen me as I struggle with this. May He guide me through this.

Proverbs 8

All about wisdom--how it's more valuable than gold or silver, how you only need to look for it to find it ("Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened" Matthew 7:7), how it existed at the creation of the world. Wisdom isn't really something that people talk about today. Intelligence, knowledge, smarts, yes. But wisdom? Not really, except in fantasy stories when there's a wise old man/woman who gives the here the information they need. Even then, though, is that knowledge or wisdom? Is there a difference? I think knowledge can be wisdom--a knowledge of God, of how to help people, how the world works--but it can also be something else--the knowledge of all the capitols in the world, or of the chemicals in the Kreb's cycle, or of how to fix a car. Wisdom, God's wisdom, is knowledge of Him and His ways, following those ways and not allowing yourself to be tempted away, or at least knowing the things that really tempt you and avoiding them. God's wisdom is different than the world's wisdom ("Don't fool yourself! If you think you are wise in the things of this world, you will have to become foolish before you can be truly wise. This is because God considers the wisdom of this world to be foolish. It is just as the Scriptures say, 'God catches the wise when they try to outsmart him.'" 1 Corinthians 3:19-23), more life-giving and less constraining, I think (God does offer freedom). The world's wisdom is so set in its ways--do this or you'll look stupid and fail. I suppose God's is too--My way or hell.

Hm.  That's stumped me. Well, God's intentions are so different--to love us, to free us from sin. The worlds just wants its so because that's how people do it, or that's what it thinks. Does that make sense?

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Psalm 111:10