Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 3 of our Wisdom-Trek and thank you for joining me.  

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom.

Today we are recording our podcast/journal from our studio in The Big House in Marietta, Ohio.  It has been a beautiful, but slightly warm week for mid-spring in Ohio and it sure makes me want to be outside on a trek myself. Growing up on an apple orchard and small farm, even after working indoors most of my adult life, I still yearn to be outside, working in the dirt, and enjoying nature.  (See About Wisdom-Trek.)

We are continuing today  to consider what tools or equipment that we need to have in order to ensure and enjoy our Wisdom-Trek. Yesterday, on Day 2 we looked at the core, or fundamental tool of love, which encapsulates all of the remaining eight tools that we will consider.

While the podcast that you listen to each day will be very similar in nature to the journal entries, you may want to review the journal entries also as they include pictures, “tweet-able” sayings and free downloadable PDF documents (tools) that will be helpful along our journey.  You can access those tools from the Free Resources page on Wisdom-Trek.com

On day 2, I challenged you to visualize your life as a wheel, with love being the hub of that wheel and the remaining tools or attributes as the spokes stemming from a perfectly round hub.   If you have not listened to the previous episodes, day 0 through day 2, I would encourage you to listen to those podcasts or read my journal entries for those days.

Another analogy that I used was that we need to consider that the attribute of love in our lives is like our backpack on our trek that contains all the other tools or equipment needed for a successful Wisdom-Trek.  The backpack is an essential component, for without a backpack the trek of life would be much more difficult.

The remaining spokes in our wheel (tools in our backpack) are joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Joy is a deep, abiding, internal sense of satisfaction, even when all conditions are not perfect, and life at times is out of our control.   Unlike happiness, which is based on happenstances(or what happens around us),  joy should remain during the tough times of life.

We can be sad about a situation/circumstance, but still maintain that deep sense of joy.  To grow in wisdom is to realize that while circumstances can impact our happiness, our true internal joy is not impacted.  To be a wise person we need to understand that sometimes life is rough and not everything turns out how we envisioned it.

Paula, my wonderful bride of nearly 36 years, and I have been through some deep valleys in both business and family issues, but we have also been able to experience some glorious summits in life. We will disappoint ourselves at times, and family or friends may disappoint us – this is a given…a fact of life.  If we have the unconditional love for ourselves and others, we can maintain a joyful spirit.

Love is the hub that securely holds the spoke of joy in place. In our  second analogy, love is the backpack that securely holds and protects our joy so that we will always have it with us.

Whenever possible, I like to understand the root, meanings, or definitions behind words.  One that is related to joy would be to “enjoy,” or “enjoyment.”  Those words indicate that we are infused with joy, that joy is part of who we are. Joy should be grafted into us so that external issues cannot tear that joy from the fabric of our lives.

It reminds me of growing up in our orchard when we would graft apple trees. The grafted limb would become part of the tree and start bearing fruit – fruit that was better than the original tree stock.  Once the graft takes hold, it cannot be torn off.

Joy should bear fruit in our lives. It is a result of having God’s Spirit residing in us. It has been grafted into our basic nature, and should make us better than we would have been on our own.

Joy gives us the strength to carry on, even when we may not feel like it.  As I consider the wisdom I gain through my faith walk, an example from the Old Testament’s prophets Nehemiah, who was the governor in Jerusalem as the city walls were being rebuilt. We see him encouraging those under his charge to go out and celebrate by serving those that had nothing prepared.

In the book that bears his name, chapter 8:10 we read, “Go and celebrate with a feast of rich foods and sweet drinks, and share gifts of food with people who have nothing prepared. This is a sacred day before our Lord. Don’t be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!”  If we have joy as an essential attribute in our lives we can have the strength to carry on.

There is another word tied to joy and that is “rejoice.”  This is an action word that indicates joy is a choice. Each day we need to take action, we need to choose to be joyful (full of joy) regardless of the circumstance.

As we continue with the analogy of preparing for our daily trek, each day we need to make a conscious decision, that we pick up and put on our “backpack which is love”  and we need to choose to put the tool of joy  in our backpack at the beginning of each day.

We need to choose to “Always be full of joy in the Lord . I will say it again rejoice!” (Phil 4:4).  Also, as the Psalmist put it in Ps 118:24, “This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.”

Using our wheel analogy, today and each day, let us make sure that the “spoke of joy” is securely fastened to the “hub of love.” Let us consciously place the “tool of joy” into our “backpack of love.”  Will it be easy? No, life gets in the way, and sometimes life is just plain messy. But I would still rather rejoice through the rough times by placing the “stones of joy” on the path, rather than get mired in the muck  of self-pity and sorrow.

We could go on with more examples of joy, but that is enough to chew on for today. Tomorrow we will move onto the second tool or spoke in our wheel and that is peace on our Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.