The Collection

Proverbs 2:1 (MSG)
Good friend, take to heart what I'm telling you; collect my counsels and guard them with your life.


One hot summer morning, I was invited to go pick blueberries with a dear friend of mine.
It was one of those mornings that you needed to "be up and at~em" by 8:00am, so you could be back in the shade by 10:00am!

 We got in the car around 9:30am for our journey to the patch which would take about an hour.  By the time we got there, it was blazin' hot not just hot!  We got our buckets and gathered our strength to begin the picking.  The berries were BEAUTIFUL.  They were sweet (yes we sampled a few) and plump and ripe.  I was looking forward to swinging on the back porch in the cool of an evening and devouring handfuls.  The problem was, I didn't realize the work involved in collecting them.  It was hot, there was no shade, there were bugs and a lot of pointy sticks to get snagged up on!  Through it all, I did manage to fill one bucket...which isn't very much.  After all of the work that went into it, you better believe I guarded them with my life!  I put them in the car carefully, being sure they wouldn't tip over on the way home.  Later that night, we did sit on the deck and I shared my bounty with the rest of the family!
 I think it is a lot like that with the Lord's counsel.  It can take some effort to search out His wisdom and when we find it, we have a great deal in this world to protect it from.  I'm praying for tenacity to stay the course in my mission of collecting God's truths and the fortitude to protect what I have gathered.