Live wisely, live well

So be careful how you live. Don’t live like ignorant people, but like wise people … Speak to one another with the words of psalms, hymns and sacred songs; sing hymns and psalms to the Lord with praise in your hearts. (verses 15,19)

Read Ephesians 5:15-20

Plenty of people try to tell you how to live well. They will give you the secrets to good health, or making money, or a happy marriage, or raising children, or whatever.

There’s an avalanche of advice. How do you keep up? Then how do you decide what advice to follow when the experts differ?

In absolute contrast is the simple advice in today’s Bible reading: make good use of every opportunity; try to find out what the Lord wants you to do; don’t get drunk but be filled with the Spirit; always give thanks for everything to God the Father.

You might consider these suggestions far too general and too simple to be of any real help to you. Think carefully about verse 19, for it gives the one secret to living wisely and well. When the focus of your life is not on yourself, but on God and on other people, then you are living wisely. Look to Jesus and find in him the example and inspiration for such a life of praising God and serving others.

By your Spirit, good God, give me true wisdom. Show me Jesus as the guiding star for all I think, say and do. Amen.

by John Vitale, in ‘Time Out, a word from God” (ACR, 2008)