Shower Thoughts are the Best Sometimes
Ecclesiastes
Hey, all. I’m still on my break from regular Monday posts (which I have scheduled to resume on September 23), but this morning’s shower thoughts just couldn’t be kept to myself. So, I’m sharing them here on a Saturday instead of Monday. :) I hope you don’t mind, and I hope they bless you as they have me.
Today, while I was rinsing soap off my person in the shower and listening to a Big Life devotional podcast episode about Ecclesiastes, the Lord unlocked another level of understanding about my word of the year (anavah, which means to fill your place but is often translated as humility or meekness).
Pamela, the host, was reading and talking about fearing the Lord and the thought that popped into my mind in answer to what is the fear of the Lord was this: “It’s putting God in His place.”
I gasped. Literally, gasped. As a little lightbulb lit up and then thought links started to light up and spread out from that single thought. First, about God and who He is and why it is SO IMPORTANT to understand who He is and that He is a good, good father. And then, it started to really zip from place to place:
It’s about keeping the past and the future in their places. Yes, we know they are there, but they aren’t here, in this moment.
It’s about putting success and pleasure and wisdom (the three things Solomon chased after) in their proper places.
It’s about putting family, friends, jobs, hobbies, food, exercise… EVERYTHING… in its place.
So to thrive (my second word of the year) in the place where God has placed me, doing the work He has given me to do, I must make sure that what doesn’t belong in my cubicle or on my desk or in my chair stays in its place. I need to make sure that the Boss (who is our good, good father) is the ultimate authority. The one I am listening to and representing. I need to work to please Him in all I do.
Can you see how this just blasts open a new understanding of other scriptures that many of us memorized as children? (If this were a regular journal entry, I’d probably delve into some of those, but this is a quick share, so I’ll let you do some of that work.)
It’s as if the light of scripture has been turned up a notch for me today. And so I had to sit down at my laptop and type this out before I finished getting dressed or drying my hair. I didn’t want to lose this revelation, nor did I want to keep it to myself (because that would be keeping my lamp under a basket instead of setting it on a lampstand).