More fool you
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Test me and know my thoughts. Psalm 139:23
Read 1 Corinthians 3:16—23
The last thing I want to be called is a fool — well, just about. I have a reputation. I like to preserve it. I like it when I am honoured. Yet the way to foolishness is easy enough. I’m a fool in someone’s eyes if I don’t value what they take as obviously supreme. And I’m a fool if I take as supreme what someone else sees as worthless, as not getting me anywhere. Especially if I live all out for it. Especially if I really invest in it. Time. Money. Emotional energy. Especially if my top priority actually impedes me from getting what the other person values. They’ll pity me. What they are all about I may understand but not care for. What I am all about they may not even understand. That is where Christ features. He is where the misunderstanding comes in. He is my supreme value. A man on a cross!
God of my soul, of my life, who has placed my very life at the centre of your own concern, who has humbled yourself to make me your supreme value, who as my Lord has become my servant and Saviour in Jesus Christ: my life takes its shape before you by the choices you have called me to make. Speak into my will. Capture it. When I choose, when I choose and others observe it, and when they disapprove, may I still choose whatever is true to Christ.