Meditate | To Acknowledge

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments or even your own article. Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor

 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths” (Proverbs 3: 5-6).

I love the reminder that my understanding of a situation is not the whole picture. So often, reality is much better than what my mind is thinking about it. For the past week, I kept opening the Bible to this passage in Proverbs, that when we acknowledge and trust in the Lord, He will direct our paths. At first glance this seems like an intellectual exercise: trust in the Lord’s presence and power in every moment and things will work out. But when I think about acknowledgment on a deeper level, I see that acknowledging someone means recognizing who they are. In the Lord’s case, He is love itself. And so I think the deepest form of acknowledgment would be to embody who the Lord is. The Lord is the source of all love and charity, so when I live and act from love and charity, I am truly acknowledging him:

“In an inner sense, worship means all union achieved through love and charity. We worship constantly when we have love and charity…Angels worship in this way, so they have a perpetual Sabbath” (Secrets of Heaven 1618).

Chelsea Rose Odhner

Chelsea lives with her husband and three young children in Willow Grove, PA. She is an assistant editor for New Church Connection and an editor and writer for New Church Perspective.