Everyday wisdom – and finding it unexpectedly

‘Now then, what am I going to write an en column about?’

It’s a repeated refrain in my house. Dissatisfied with my flatmate’s answers, I cast the net wider. I ask friends. Colleagues. College acquaintances. My mother. I’m drawing a blank.

Several days later I have lunch with an author who has insightful things to say about all sorts of things: the state of evangelicalism in the US; leadership issues in the church; how to do apologetics to young people. I come away genuinely invigorated.

‘How was your lunch?’, my long-suffering flatmate asks me later that day. ‘It made me want to be wise,’ I say. ‘Think how easy it would be to write my en columns if I were him.’ I’ve still got nothing.

Sign of the times?

Maybe it’s a sign of the times. My boss laments that fewer people seem to want to write books these days. People in ministry seem more tired than ever. I get asked an average of twice a week by well-meaning acquaintances what I’m going to write a book on next. ‘I don’t know,’ I shrug, ‘I don’t have any ideas.’ Where does one find the time to think original thoughts? If only I were less busy.

One Saturday, I have a sore throat and a dripping nose. We have one Covid test left in the house – the NHS ones you used to be able to get for free. It’s been so long since I took one that I can’t remember how and have to read all the instructions like a rookie. Part of me is secretly hoping that it’s positive so that I don’t have to do all the things I’m meant to be doing at church tomorrow. Two little lines and I’ll get a free pass.

It’s negative.

As I put the box in the recycling it feels like the end of an era. Remember Covid – back when we all resolved to be less busy, more birdsong?

I’m wrangling with a different author over some chapters on the theme of busyness. He’s a good writer, but I keep returning them covered with red ink. It takes a few rounds to realise why. ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ I tell him. Truth is, while I aspire to have more margin, I don’t actually want to stop. I keep saying I’ve got too much to do, but who would I be without it? What if I had the time, and still didn’t have the ideas?

Meanwhile my flatmate, longsuffering in more ways than one, has been made to stop by nine months of long Covid. In many ways we have opposite (but, I hasten to add, unequal) problems. She spends a lot of time where I want to be – at home, on the sofa. I spend a lot of time where she wants to be – in the real world, interacting with people.

The Lord has been at work

But from her horizontal position, the Lord has been at work. She says that having so little she can do and so few people she can see has forced her to face up to her insecurities in a new way, and deal with them. Sometimes it’s when we stop that we’re confronted with who we really are, and who God really is.

It’s a reminder that being able to offer insightful and pithy 650-word takes on current issues is only one kind of wisdom. Wisdom is seen in Christlike character – in living well in the situation in which we’re in, be that on or off the couch. This my flatmate has in spades. In contrast to my busy people pleasing – so desperate to be seen doing it all, and doing it all well, while resenting my to-do list – wisdom fears the Lord. And because of that, wisdom knows when to stop.

So… I will.