Planning Love in the Little Things
The king delights in a wise servant, but a shameful servant arouses his fury… The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty… Like an archer who that random is one who hires a fool or any passer-by. Proverbs 14:35, 21:5, 26:10
Tim Keller insists in God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, "Organizing is a matter of… Being organized. Disorganization is selfishness, a lack of sacrificial love in little things."
I'm maturing through the convicting and stretching application of this principle. I've excused haste and the resulting neglect of details because, so goes my self-justifying script, it flows from the fact that I care more. Now, I am learning to seek care as much in calm, diligent planning with foresight as in the moment of overwhelming action or jaw-dropping inspiration.
While God is free to act by unanticipated epiphany, much in Proverbs also suggests He willingly limits His usual action to principles He establishes beforehand. It is normal for Him, He says, to let His servant in on what He is going to do. This means, by the extension of Christ's New Testament teaching, that we are not just servants but friends.
As both empowered servant and invited friend of God, we walk in a relationship with Him. Over time, we get to see the ways He usually works. Then we get to follow in those ways – and rejoice in His interest in life's smallest details. The future into which we plan tentatively, He already inhabits in the macro trends we might anticipate and in the granular graces we can only begin to imagine.
Since He expresses His love through anticipating future details and we have the mind of Christ, we can do the same on a far less exact scale. We can discipline ourselves toward forethought and organization prayerfully executed. In the sphere where Christ has placed us, we can plead to put ourselves in the places of those we influence. Since His Character is sacrificial love in the little things, we can ask that this proportionate, appropriate, individualized, anticipatory love flow through us.
Tim Keller insists in God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, "Organizing is a matter of… Being organized. Disorganization is selfishness, a lack of sacrificial love in little things."
I'm maturing through the convicting and stretching application of this principle. I've excused haste and the resulting neglect of details because, so goes my self-justifying script, it flows from the fact that I care more. Now, I am learning to seek care as much in calm, diligent planning with foresight as in the moment of overwhelming action or jaw-dropping inspiration.
While God is free to act by unanticipated epiphany, much in Proverbs also suggests He willingly limits His usual action to principles He establishes beforehand. It is normal for Him, He says, to let His servant in on what He is going to do. This means, by the extension of Christ's New Testament teaching, that we are not just servants but friends.
As both empowered servant and invited friend of God, we walk in a relationship with Him. Over time, we get to see the ways He usually works. Then we get to follow in those ways – and rejoice in His interest in life's smallest details. The future into which we plan tentatively, He already inhabits in the macro trends we might anticipate and in the granular graces we can only begin to imagine.
Since He expresses His love through anticipating future details and we have the mind of Christ, we can do the same on a far less exact scale. We can discipline ourselves toward forethought and organization prayerfully executed. In the sphere where Christ has placed us, we can plead to put ourselves in the places of those we influence. Since His Character is sacrificial love in the little things, we can ask that this proportionate, appropriate, individualized, anticipatory love flow through us.
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