The Wisdom of the Guide

My husband and I recently went to Europe and were able to spend a good amount of time in Rome. At one point in history, Rome was the center of the world and everything flowed through and out of it. So we were able to see some of the world’s most beautiful historical artifacts and buildings and learn an incredible amount about humanity. One of the sights we were able to see while in Rome was the Pantheon. The Pantheon was built as a place of worship and sacrifice for Greek gods. The word pantheon means “honor all gods.” But in the year 609 AD, the Catholic church took control of the Pantheon and transformed it into a church.

While there we listened to an audio guide to help us understand more of what we were seeing. The audio guide was giving a historical break down of the temple and made the comment that historians believe that the Romans worshipped up to 33,000 different gods. They worshipped and sacrificed to gods from big stuff like war and love, right down to the everyday things like bread or even manure.

I remember standing in the middle of the Pantheon and thinking how exhausting that must have been for people. To have to take my worries or hopes to thousands of different deities just sounds more tiring than it does hopeful. Praise be to God that this is not required of us. What a gift that we can take our biggest fears and our most mundane worries to the one and only God of the Universe and to know that His steadfastness and wisdom are unchanging and that His plans are not contingent on our faithfulness.

This experience has really pushed me to think about how often I realistically cast not just my fears but everything on God. Too often I find myself putting them on my husband or good friends. I sometimes feel like some things are too petty or mundane to be worth God’s time. I can easily choose to believe in the “wisdom” of the world more than the true and pure wisdom of God. We must not believe the lies that the world feeds to us, friends. There is a reason Jesus said in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

As believers, how do we combat the voices of the world and learn to lean into God though? Just like that audio guide was helping me to understand more of what I was seeing, so also does God. He freely gives us his Spirit and his Word. John 14:26 says, “The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” When your mind and heart get muddled with the things of this world, ask the Spirit to fill you with the wisdom that only God and his Word can provide to make clear the way forward.

May we grow to be more like the person described in Jeremiah 17:7-8, “The person who trusts in the Lord, and whose confidence indeed is in the Lord, is blessed. He will be like a tree planted in water: it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn’t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.”

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