Listen

Are any of you wise and understanding? Show that your actions are good with a humble lifestyle that comes from wisdom. However, if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, then stop bragging and living in ways that deny the truth.

James 3:13-14

Think

Humility? Wisdom? Jealousy? Selfishness? Yikes! James is full of hard-hitting words! If today’s scripture is teaching us about greatness, it certainly warns us that showing off isn’t the greatness God is looking for. In James 3, wisdom and understanding create humility. Bragging about living your best life now, while being eaten away by bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, won’t get you closer to God. In fact, that combo seems to act as a blinder to seeing what is true.

Could it be that embracing what’s true invites us into spaces where wisdom and understanding grow in us? In those places, where we can see what actually is true, we can also catch a quick glimpse of God’s grace. And those quickest of glimpses and getting connected to God’s grace: that’s the stuff greatness is made of!

Alisha Damron Seruyange

Question to Ponder:

How have wisdom and understanding shown up when you allowed yourself to see what was true?

Pray

God, everybody’s life looks so shiny. The filters make it hard to see what’s real. It’s hardest for me to see what’s real when…

God, give me eyes to start seeing myself as I actually am: deeply flawed, deeply loved, ready for wisdom and understanding.

Amen.

Go

Being great starts when we set our hearts toward the ways of God, connecting with God, and then loving the world more like God loves.