Wisdom from a quiet place

In the midst of my own current speechlessness, and the remnants of the five to ten posts I have started recently and haven’t finished, I remain dependent on others for content.

Thank goodness for people like Jared. His new solo blog, a “quiet place” called Shizuka Blog, contains healthy, flowering plants of wisdom such as this one:

The fruit of the Spirit is not automatic. I can’t just think about God and superficially read my Bible every day and “get fruit.”

I have to root my spirit in His, in the nurturing soil of the Word incarnate and the Word written. I have to put myself in locations conducive to spiritual nourishment — family, church community, a quiet corner in which to really pray and study.

In his novel The Fourth Treasure, Todd Shimoda describes the efforts of Japanese calligraphers to perfect their artistry. One sensei instructs his students to perform ten thousand strokes a day for ten thousand days. And then the student might be ready.

And the strokes are not the Japanese characters themselves, but the individual strokes — the “radicals” — that together make a character. That’s ten thousand times a day, for ten thousand days, of practicing the parts of a letter. Can you imagine having to practice drawing the three separate parts of an A for that long before you can attempt to draw the actual letter?

But there is a beauty and a spirit and an emotional substance to expertly rendered Japanese kanji not found in the cold geometry of our twenty-six-letter alphabet.

There is a difference between trying and training.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. — Galatians 6.9

The work of sanctification is God’s. But there is work to be done on my part, as well. The works of faithfulness.

Disciplines to undertake. Hard work. Consistency. Perseverance.

A long obedience in the same direction.

7 thoughts on “Wisdom from a quiet place

  1. The work of sanctification is God’s. But there is work to be done on my part, as well. The works of faithfulness.

    Disciplines to undertake. Hard work. Consistency. Perseverance. A long obedience in the same direction.

    So what he should have said was, “there is WORKS to be done”?

  2. Steve, sure.

    I didn’t necessarily mean “work” singular, as in “there’s one thing to do.” I just meant there are disciplines to undertake as we grow spiritually.

    You undertake several tasks at your job, right? But you don’t say “I’m going to works,” do you? 😉

  3. Ya missed the point. It sounds like it’s a works-based thing, rather than by faith in the grace of God. I struggle with the faith vs works thing all the time. Seems like you’re coming down on the side of salvation (at least partly) by works.

  4. Heh – my first controversy!

    Steve, knowing what I know of Jared, and of his soteriology, I can guarantee you that he doesn’t believe that works have anything to do with salvation.

    I believe he’s speaking of the works we do as God’s workmanship – works that were planned by Him before the foundation of the world.

    I did a post on this recently, which talks about the tension between God’s working in us and us working out our salvation with fear and trembling. . . this is an interesting topic

  5. I was confused at first by the question, wondering if it was about works salvation or just a quibble over the singular/plural use of the noun “work.”

    Since I know now it is the former, my response is easy: As a five-point Calvinist, I’m firmly a sola fide man.

    But I’d have to toss out huge sections of the New Testament if I wanted to believe I had no work to do now.

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