Watching Daily At Wisdom's Gates: An Introduction

 I used to blog prolifically on the W*rdPress platform, but I scrapped that and have decided to migrate over here, where I have a feeling I had an abortive blog back in the day.

'Watching Daily At Wisdom's Gates' is a reference to Proverbs 8:34 in the Bible, written by the wisest non-God man ever to have lived, King Solomon of ancient Israel, about 3,000 years ago.

In that verse, he personifies wisdom, who says that those who watch daily at her gates are blessed (made spiritually happy by God).

Solomon was a man who immersed himself into life, and tasted much of what it had to offer, which could be conveniently alliterated as Ws.

God gave Solomon a blank check of whatever he liked, and he asked for Wisdom, which God gave him. 

But he also tried his hand at Wine (/folly/drunkenness). 

He indulged in Women (700 wives and 300 concubines!). 

He did great Work (building God a temple in Jerusalem amongst many other things). 

He had great Wealth (anything that money could buy at the time he could purchase). 

...

And yet his conclusion about all the above, intrinsically good Ws (although not good to idolise)?

I suppose if I was to stick with the alliteration, he would have described them all as a gust of Wind (meaningless/vanity).

I seem to remember that a musician hundreds of years ago called Thomas Tallis wrote a song called something like 'Fond Youth is But A Bubble', which pretty much sums up Solomon's verdict on life, it is fragile, transient, and forgettable.

If I was to stop there, we might conclude that there's no point pursuing Wisdom. However, even in Ecclesiastes, the book I'm largely referring to in the Bible in which Solomon concluded that all is vain, Solomon concluded that Wisdom is better than Wine. We might want to 'eat, drink and be merry', and forget the fact we face death. But it's best to wise up to our mortality than to try and black it out.

And even in Ecclesiastes that on the face of it is all about the meaninglessness of life, Solomon acknowledges that the Worship of God is the ultimate meaning of life- to fear Him and to keep His commandments: to love Him and to love one another.

...

So Watching Daily At Wisdom's Gates imagines that we have become citizens of the celestial city, the heavenly New Jerusalem, the Zion of God, the city He is preparing for those who love Him. We often might imagine heaven as sitting on clouds strumming harps. But the Biblical image of the new creation is of a physical reality, a model city, an urban paradise in which all is well in the new world that God is building.

...

John Bunyan, who famously wrote Pilgrim's Progress, also wrote a book (I think it's The Holy War) in which the city of God (an illustration of a believer in the Lord God of the Bible) is under siege from satan and his forces. I suppose 'Watching Daily At Wisdom's Gates' is more of that kind of imagery than just sitting up in an ivory tower reading dusty tomes. The spiritual life isn't about sitting in a monastery doing navel gazing, but about doing spiritual warfare: not literally bashing Bibles, but fighting bad impulses with Holy Spirit-ual positivity.

...

I'm aware that I have a tendency to tangential-ism/waffling. So to get a bit more pertinent to what this blog's all about, it is basically mostly daily devotionals from the Word of God, the Bible.

For many years I have used the ESV daily reading Bible plan, which you can check out on Spotify and on the internet somewhere or other. A friend bought me a paper copy of the ESV daily reading Bible several years ago, in which the Old Testament is read once and the New Testament and Psalms twice in a year. A number of years ago I started writing daily devotionals about them, which I have continued almost without fail to this day (I had a blip a couple of weeks ago when I missed a few days, which probably isn't a bad thing as there's a danger I idolise this exercise).

I write mostly for myself in an attempt to better myself. If anyone else happens to be blessed as a side-product of this exercise, then that is a bonus.

Every day, I pick a verse out of the chapters I read, and write about it. Because I feel I'm starting to exhaust the most standout-able verses in the ESV daily reading Bible plan, I'm mixing it up this year (2021), by following my namesake Murray M'Cheyne's daily reading Bible plan, which I think will simply take me through the entire Bible once in a year.

If you search for 'Watching Daily At Wisdom's Gates' on Amazon, you can find a book of 366 of my old devotionals to purchase. If I self publish any more, I'll make them freely available, as they are on this blog.

Enjoy!

Robert