That They Admonish – Investing My Life In Others In A Detached World

This is the final quality God desires to see in every older woman of grace, which describes their lifestyle of admonishing, encouraging, or calling others to realize what God has clearly stated they are supposed to do. This quality is God’s call for women of grace to wise living, encouraging counsel, discreet or focused living, and restraining life choices. In the English-speaking world, when we see someone doing something totally unprofitable, that shows they are oblivious to something far greater they should be doing there is an expression that goes something like: ‘you are just arranging deck chairs on the sinking Titanic’. That is an almost 100-year old expression for ‘refocusing their attention’, or pointing out that there is something far greater they should be doing. The term Paul uses in verse 4 captures that very idea for Christians. We are called by God to something so much greater than us, so much bigger than anything else we could find to do. As we go through life, we more and more learn what God expects from us, and respond. Then we notice that some of our friends are wasting their life doing things that do not please the Lord. This word Paul uses is a call to each of us to first examine our life, and then reach out to the lives of others so that none of us waste our precious, never to be repeated moments in life: Arranging Deck Chairs On the Sinking Titanic: I have always looked a little differently at the Titanic than others may, because of my grandmother’s experience. On April 10, 1912 as the greatest, fastest, largest, and most expensive ship in the entire world docked my grandmother looked wistfully at its grandeur. She held a lowest deck, third-class ticket in her hand to the maiden voyage of the Titanic, but as she stood in line at the White Star Lines office, she had to get a refund. Her passport papers from the embassy had gone through, new life in America was just a walk up the gangway; but a clerk had failed to sign and stamp one area of the paperwork; and she was denied boarding on the mighty ocean liner. As the blast of the Titanic’s departure horn sounded, my grandmother was handed tickets for another ship, the TSS Rotterdam, to sail third-class on another day, so she could go back after the weekend and get her paper work signed. We all know the story of what happened just 4 days later as the Titanic plummeted to its watery grave two miles beneath the icy waters of the North Atlantic. For me, I have always been amazed at God’s Providence in that clerk’s omission without which my mother would never has been born in 1920, nor me in 1956, nor any of our 8 children since 1985. Dr. John Barnett continues his series on being “Grace Energized” as a 21st Century Woman of Grace. (GE-16)