A Message of Hope

If I’m ever tempted to be envious, it’s usually not of people who possess things that I don’t have, but of those who have skills that I don’t have.  There are all kinds of skills that I just don’t have a clue about – whether it’s welding metal or construction or carpentry or plumbing, or auto mechanics or electrical work – I can only do the most basic tasks in any of those areas.  I don’t know how to run a business or to come up with new ways of making make money.  I can’t do surgery or do accounting.  And sometimes when I see people that can do those kinds of things and it seems like it comes so naturally to them, I get a little bit envious.

 Now, I’m not trying to put myself down.  I do have some skills that not everyone has.  I know that, for some of you, standing in a pulpit every week would scare you to death, and I’m thinking – “What’s the big deal?”  Which is what you’re thinking when I call you and ask you to help me fix a leak or saw a piece of wood. 

 We all have certain skills that we have and others that we don’t, but then, there’s at least one skill that we all need to have, and that is the skill of living. 

 Unfortunately, some are more skilled at living than others.  We all know people who are alive, but who aren’t very skilled at life.  They are what Dave Ramsey calls “Murphy Magnets.”  If something bad is going to happen, it’s going to happen to them.  Now, of course, bad things happen to every one.  But some people just seemed to be faced with one disaster after another, so much so, that you begin to wonder, “Is some of this self-inflicted?” 

 Other people manage quite well in some areas, but not in others.  Maybe they’re great at running a business, but have no skills with their families.  Maybe they can quickly get a vision as to how to remodel a bathroom, but when it comes to renovating a broken relationship, they don’t know where to start.

 One resource that I’ve been introduced to recently that has helped me know how to talk about this is a book by Kenneth Boa called, Conformed to His Image (Zondervan, 2001).   It carries the subtitle, “Biblical and Practical Approaches to Spiritual Formation.”  The things that Boa shares have made an impact on me and my own spiritual growth, so a lot of what I’ll be sharing in these next few posts comes from his book, but I’ve also included a lot of thoughts that  I felt God was showing me as I developed this lesson.

 The word that the Old Testament uses for “knowing how to do things” is chokmah –and it’s a basic meaning is “skill.”  One place it’s used quite often is in talking about all the skills that were needed to build the Tabernacle.  This passage is typical:

 Exodus 35:30-35

 Then Moses said to the Israelites, “See, the LORD has chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts-  to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of artistic craftsmanship. And he has given both him and Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, the ability to teach others. He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as craftsmen, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers—all of them master craftsmen and designers.

 I’m impressed that, at what we think of being under primitive conditions, the people of Israel had a lot of practical skills.  Then again, that might not be so surprising when we realized that they had been living in Egypt, which was at that stage the world’s most advanced civilization, for the past 400 years .  In order to work as slaves for the Egyptians, they had to acquire their skills.

But this word chokmah has another translation.  But I wanted to talk about it’s basic meaning of skill before talking about the main sense in whichI want to use it.  Because the word chokmah is also translated as “wisdom.”  And when we understand this, we understand better what wisdom is.  Wisdom is the skill of living life.