October 15 – Rock of Wisdom (Matthew 7:24-27)

“Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”
(Matthew 7:24)

IN WORD:
Perhaps we have come to assume too much about the character of Jesus. We ask, “What would Jesus do?” Envisioning the pre-modern Man of peace who walked around Galilee so many years ago, just as the movies portray. We wonder how much relevance He has for a world of corporate takeovers and global communications. We wonder how much of His voice is our own psychology and how much of it is really His.
That’s a flaw of human nature: We have difficulty distinguishing between our God-given but distorted consciences and the pure, convicting voice of our Lord. The Spirit of God dwells within us, but so do all sorts of misconceptions, anxieties, phobias, hang-ups, and habits. When we think we hear His voice, is it a matter of revelation or psychosis? In our discernment, there is a fine line between the two. In the reality of His Kingdom, there is an unbridgeable division between them. We must learn how to tell the difference.
That is why a strict adherence to God’s Word is paramount. We are not to make His Words our occasion for petty divisions, but we are to hear His voice clearly. And Jesus offers it clearly. He has instructed us thoroughly. He has shed His light on the Old Testament — it is all summed up in Him — and He has shined His light into the New — things will always be summed up in Him.

IN DEED:
As our minds go through this renewal process — the transformation from old, worldly ways of thinking to grasping and embodying the deep mysteries of the now-revealed Kingdom of God — we must saturate them in His words. His teaching must become the first set of criteria used in our decision making. His wisdom must become the fire that melts us and the mold that shapes us. We must define truth by Him and define all that is outside of Him as un-truth. We must build all our houses on the solid, un-shakable foundation of His Kingdom.

“When we speak about wisdom, we are speaking about Christ.”
-St. Ambrose-