A dear friend turned me to this scripture the other day, a miracle in it's own right that I would even look at a scripture to start with. I got thinking though about the meaning, about my life, about many, many things, and in that great duration of thought, the phrase from that scripture "Wisdom and Order," kept popping into my mind. Though the meat of the scripture resontes the idea that, "...it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength," still, the idea of Wisdom and Order struck it's poignancy with every glancing thought. Wisdom and Order, I kept repeating back to myself, Wisdom and Order... "...See that all these things are done in wisdom and order?" Obviously there is a reason that this scripture was phrased the way it was, and still, I'm honestly shocked that I gave this much thought to a scripture... not like me at all.
Firstly, I recognized the idea that Wisdom was placed BEFORE Order and in an unexpected gust of second nature I got slapped in the face by my metaphorical mind self. It would make NO sense to have Order before Wisdom... Let's present it like this, shall we?
You have family coming over for dinner... or maybe friends over for a party?
Okay?
okay...
The overall task at hand would be to clean the house and prepare to host your home for guests and visitors that day.
Right?
right...
The WISE thing to do would be to make a list of things that need to get done.
That's the easy part.
Actually coming up with the list of things that needs to get done?
Different story.
Let's image we actually did the chores and cleaning BEFORE we made the list.
RED FLAG #1
Everybody reading this just realized, "That doesn't make sense!!!"
But we're not done... bear with me here.
We even follow through with carrying out the chores, BEFORE we put thought into them.
Things become A LOT harder (and on a grammatical side note, A LOT is two words, not ALOT... alot sounds like a type of animal, one that I don't want to own... I wouldn't want to own an alot... but even then, you don't own adog or abear or abird... does that makes sense? Grammar rant - Done.) to get done. Absentmindedly (without thought or wisdom) we could do the dishes before we prepare the food, which means once the food is prepared, we may end up having to do the dishes again...
We could vacuum the carpets at the beginning of the day and then dust right after that, which means at the end of the day you would have to vacuum the now days worth of sullied carpets which have been todden on in a day of preperation... and very few people dust the same thing twice in a day, and depending on the kind of vacuum you have, you may have to dust again... but you won't ;) see where I'm getting? And before you know it you're mowing the lawn at midnight with no light (so your mowing lines are all crooked and make your lawn look bad), the bathrooms still haven't been cleaned and your children have failed to be fed.
It's a hassle.
Chances are, taking some thought and time and Wisdom (KEY WORD ALERT!!! WISDOM!!!!!!), we can then put things into order, we save ourselves time, headache, stress and double cleaning duty (and this is all metaphorical, reffering back to the scripture).
It made sense... Wisdom before Order. I kind of thought WO! That's crazy! And then it hit me again, "THE SCRIPTURE'S NOT EVEN OVER!!!" The next part said, "for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength." This part made such complete and natural sense to me, since I've already prepared and taken care of the pre-requisites, this shouldn't be too much of a hassle to deal with. Not only that, it probably COULDN'T be ahassle (see what I did there?) to deal with, even if we WANTED to run faster than we had the strength to, our preparation, planning, and wisdom would help us to decide otherwise. But even if we wanted to run fast, I think we couldn't run faster than we had strength, I just think that our Wisdom would give us MORE strength, and that would ultimately lead to a faster running speed.
There's nothing wrong with moving in a fast paced personal life... we live in a fast paced world! Sometimes we can't help it, sometime we get caught up in how fast it is, that we focus less on the Wisdom of the choices and more, how quickly and how much can we get done... in essence, the Order of our fast paced lives, and as the little demonstration displayed ^^^^^^^^^^^ we could soon create more than is necessary for us to deal with. But for those who CAN display and DO display Wisdom before Order, they ARE blessed with more strength and in turn they CAN move faster than the average person. I know only a few people who are like this, but the cause and effect are jaw droppingly effective, and the results are exponentially benificial. Once you start on that track, you can't stop.
ON THE OTHER HAND!!! There are those who (Introverts) need time to themselves to think and understand, here we end up spending all of our time in Wisdom section and we completely put Order out of place, thinking that if we think about it enough, somehow, the Order will present itself. But just as those who run Order, thing after thing after job after job after obligation after obligation, should probably delve a little more into the thought and Wisdom aspect of the tango, those who focus obsoletely on Wisdom should probably open themselves more to the Order, and either way you run the play, neither can happen without SOME form of outward expression. Meaning, we need to start incorperating what we have a smaller percentage of for a more balanced and more well rounded lifestyle, this can be from baby steps like; simply acknowledging that said process needs to take place, to sparatic zombie steps like; working on Wisdom here and Order there and then maybe some ice cream and then some more Order and then Wisdom and then treat yourself to GoodWood, to ka-frakin-huge steps like; having a total change of heart, stopping all morally unhealthy activity, changing the direction your life is heading and doing it all cold turkey, over night. Any and all are plausible, but simply depend on how you operate and who you are. Ultimately, Moderation in all things.
It sends me straight to the talk given by Elder Kent D. Watson of the Second Quorum of the Seventy from the October 2009 Conference Saturday afternoon session, the talk is titled "Being Temperate in All Things." An overarching ideal in this talk lends itself to the fact that, "Learning to be temperate in all things is a spiritual gift available through the Holy Ghost." Which means something else. If, as King Benjamin tells us, we see to it, "that all these things are done in wisdom and order;" it is going to be the product of the Holy Ghost and its accompaniment in our lives. God is only willing to help us as much as we are willing to help ourselves, he will not trust us with more blessings if we cannot proactively procure the blessings that he is attempting to offer us now, and those blessings will in turn lend to the knowledge and experience that we need to obtain other blessings and again, the results are exponentially benificial. Once you start on that track, you can't stop. But YOU have decide to take action, YOU have to decide what action is best to take, and YOU need God to make that decision, he will offer you the basics, the Wisdom and Order, what you do with it from there is all you.
"And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent," (this is the part where you productively procure), "that thereby he might win the prize;" (the prize, in my opinion and in the case of this post, the understanding and knowledge of what it is to have those gifts, to cherish them, and to use them wisely) "therefore, all things must be done in order" (in which the wisdom that God has granted you will ease the road in procuring what you find important and what is vitally necessary to your spirit and your overall moral, emotional, physical, and spiritual health.)
"And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength." (Wisdom) "And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order." (Order)
"God does not play dice with the universe." ~ Albert Einstein
"God has a plan for all of us, but He expects us to do our share of work for it." ~ Minnie Pearl
"Don't expect that you Deserve anything, chances are you don't want what you deserve." ~ T.W. Kline
I think my favorite insight of yours is when you mention that you can't have wisdom without order and you can't have order without wisdom - well, I guess you could, but they're a bit worthless without each other. When you talked about the introverted people who only think about what they are going to do (wisdom), it reminds me that an idea is just idea until you do something about it. I like to relate that to faith. Faith is totally an action word. It's a verb and you have to act on it, or else it means nothing.
ReplyDeleteIt's one thing to think you have faith and it's something completely different to act on it and then KNOW you have faith. That's how I understand it. So what's the point of organizing something if you don't go through with it? It's rather pointless if you ask me. For example, my first finals week in college, I spent two hours on a Sunday night organizing my week, planning out all my time so that I could get everything that I needed to done in time. Without fail, I didn't follow the schedule that spent so much time on making and it just made me realize that since I didn't exactly follow through with it, 1) it caused a lot more stress and 2) planning everything out was actually quite a bit of a waste of time to be quite honest. I guess I did learn something from it - don't overload yourself and don't spend so much time planning two weeks out if you don't intend to follow it. Haha, it made me feel awesome that I could plan out that much time and such, which took a lot of brain power, but I also think it's important now to put those ideas and thoughts into action and actually follow through with them.
Marshall, I love your insights. I should spark interest in you more often. I'll be putting my insights up later today, like I said earlier - :)
<3
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