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First off, a thank you to all of you who have sent a note to Pastor Michael or myself this past week with your suggestions for how we can best encourage one another through these devotions! You might just start seeing those themes in these next days and weeks.\xa0 And please, do keep reaching out as we wander this wilderness together!\xa0 Now, on to Proverbs.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.\xa0 (Proverbs 3:5-6)

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This is a text that someone suggested to us, but Proverbs has also been a book that I\u2019ve been reading through again in my own devotions recently.\xa0 Maybe because I\u2019ve felt one thing in short supply in our world right now is wisdom.\xa0 But, maybe even more so because I\u2019m not feeling very equipped to live wisely in these days either.

Maybe you feel similarly.

The book of Proverbs reminds us frequently that \u201cthe fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.\u201d\xa0 If we\u2019re to start down this path of seeking or gaining wisdom, lovingly seeking to follow the Lord is the first step.\xa0

The familiar text we\u2019re looking at today takes another step. \xa0Trust in the Lord, rather than your own understanding.\xa0 Submit to him.\xa0 He\u2019s the one who makes the crooked straight.

Well, there\u2019s a whole lot of crooked things going on in our world right now.\xa0 Pandemic, politics, lockdown, and a lot of hard stuff in the lives of those we love.\xa0 And our minds are exhausted attempting to understand it all, let alone respond to it.\xa0 And when our responses do come out, well, they don\u2019t always prove to be the most helpful for straightening things out.

Hence the invitation of Proverbs: start with God, rather than your own ability to sort through the mess of our world.\xa0 Submit that world and your ways each day to him.\xa0 Trust him to make a way, trust him to straighten out your paths.

Pastor Michael gave a concrete example of how to do just that in his devotion yesterday.\xa0 Left to our own understanding, we might want to argue with, complain about, or altogether disregard the health restrictions imposed on us, believing we know better.\xa0 But God continues to invite us to respect the authorities placed over us, not for their own sake, but as a submission of our ways to him, trusting that he will be good to his word, making our paths straight.\xa0 \xa0

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