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Morning Reflection in the Season of Advent
December 12, 2025
Reflection: Jo Ann B. Jones
“Annie had been brought up in a strictly Christian household, had it stuffed down her throat, she said. While she no longer went to church, she made her children go, just in case, like an insurance policy. Faith wasn’t about believing as much as behaviour. Sunday School and reading the Bible — it was what you did and it made you good.” A Marriage at Sea
How do you know? It comes back to listening to your heart, if that is the seat of your faith, The Old French cor or Coeur means heart. Courage comes from the same place etymologically, that is the heart. Discernment begins with the courage to listen to and from your heart for the whisper of God .In your heart, what drives the choices you make? Envy? If so, then your wisdom is unspiritual. Selfish ambition? Your actions betray you as a friend of the world rather than a friend of God.
The damage that arises from such actions is not isolated to an individual but flows outward to affect people in a variety of circumstances. Our actions and thoughts have consequences. They move away from us horizontally and vertically. Wisdom is born from above in order to spread edifying and holy ways of being to a community. Note, from your experience, the damage done to community when an individual takes action based on wisdom of the world. It throws the whole body out of whack. There will be disorder, wickedness, and even murder. If you covet, your cravings will lead you away from God as well as away from your neighbor.
Wisdom from above is willing to yield. Walt Whitman once said: ‘Be curious, not judgmental.’” Curiosity is a wise posture born of a willingness to yield. Judgment is not. It leads to defensiveness and may cause us to miss out on an invitation from God to try something new. Recall Jesus overlooking Jerusalem, willing to move forward and to yield, lamenting “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing?”
Wisdom from above is without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. In how many instances do we need to be reminded of the challenge that we not develop a partiality that betrays our allegiance to God. Whose best interests are at the heart of our choices, our actions or inaction as people? Rather, following Christ is a matter of with what posture and from what core your works emerge. Are you a friend of the world or a friend of God? Is the wisdom informing your action in the world from above, from God?
This is the challenge of developing faith, then and now.
A Prayer for Guidance
O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment, and light rises up in darkness for the godly: . Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what you would have us to do, that the Spirit of wisdom may save us from all false choices, and that in your light we may see light, and in your straight path may not stumble; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
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