Wisdom for the Holidays

Good friend, take to heart what I’m telling you;
    collect my counsels and guard them with your life.
Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom;
    set your heart on a life of Understanding.
That’s right—if you make Insight your priority,
    and won’t take no for an answer,
Searching for it like a prospector panning for gold,
    like an adventurer on a treasure hunt,
Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours;
    you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.

~ Proverbs 2:1-5, Message

The goal for us, at all times in life, is to live out of our certain way of seeing to the best of our ability. Sometimes there are constraints on that ability. In ideal circumstances, let’s say, I may have the potential to be 100% compassionate. Under stress, maybe the max number is something more like 50%. We don’t need to live in fear of God or shame of ourselves because we aren’t able to reach 100% compassion under stress. We’re better off realizing that 50% is the best we can do and then brainstorming how we get to that number (as opposed to tumbling down to something like 10%).

Perhaps if you spent less time with your family, you would be more likely to reach 50% compassion (or loving or gracious or merciful or whatever), than if you spent more time with them. So often we think being loving and compassionate is giving people whatever they ask for, but, sometimes when we give people everything they ask for we lose the ability to fully display our certain way of seeing. If boundaries help us get closer to our “max number”- then why not consider implementing those boundaries? Everyone wins.