We’ve been having a spiritual check up with the Book of James and some of Proverbs – holding our lives alongside biblical wisdom literature.  We’ve considered the evidence of faith as revealed by our outward living; we’ve considered the importance of intentional speech as a practice of healthy discipleship.  Today, James offers us a sort of differential diagnosis.

If there is disorder and wickedness, it may be symptomatic of bitter envy and selfish ambition.  If things are peaceable, gentle, willing to yield and full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality or hypocrisy – then the wisdom from above is doing its work to maintain spiritual health.

Self reflection is the chief diagnostic tool for spiritual health.  But since we often find what we don’t want to know, we are not very good at self reflection.  Nevertheless, imagine that you are having a spiritual check up for real and that you are asked “so, is anything else bothering you?  How is your life going?  Would you say that things are peaceable and gentle?  Or would you say that things are sort of the opposite of peaceable and gentle?”

How would you answer that.  Many of us would have to acknowledge that things are not as well as we’d like them to be.  Many of us would offer a litany of all the things that have not gone our way recently that have left us feeling unhappy and unsettled and unsatisfied and … well… maybe angry or maybe ready to just move to someplace far away, like Alexander.

There is a classic children’s book entitled Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No good Very Bad Day.  Written by Judith Viorst, the title character is named for her youngest son.  Alexander’s day begins when he gets out of bed with bum in his hair because he went to bed with gum in his mouth.  When he gets out of bed he trips on his skateboard and then he drops his sweater in the sink while the water is running.  Even before breakfast, Alexander knows he’s having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.  Viorst’s description of Alexander’s day runs on and along the way, in this delightful children’s story, she subtly reminds us of our human condition.  Alexander has breakfast with his two brothers, each of whom finds a really cool toy in their breakfast cereal while Alexander finds only breakfast cereal.  At school, his teacher likes another child’s picture of a sailboat better than Alexander’s picture of an invisible castle; he is told he sings too loud, missed sixteen when he counted and to add insult to injury, his best friends reveals that Alexander is NOT his first best friend but his third.  Alexander has a variety of reactions to these events, the most common one being that he is going to move to Australia.

But when his best friend betrays him, he momentarily wishes that his friend would sit on a tack, or that the ice cream would fall off the top of his next cone.

The litany of Alexander’s day continues.  Absolutely nothing goes his way.  He is the only child whose mother forgot to put dessert in his lunch.  At the dentist, he is the only one with a cavity.  At the shoe store, the shoes he chooses are sold out and he gets plain white ones while his brothers get cool ones.  He gets picked on by his brothers, but he gets in trouble.  By supper, he’s had one terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.  And then there are lima beans, which Alexander hates.

I don’t know why Alexander’s repeated refrain is “I think I’ll move to Australia – except that its very far away, and it is a fun word to pronounce that works well in the rhythm of Viorst’s wonderfully written text.

What I do know is that most of us can identify with Alexander and his day.  He is learning what we all learn.  Life is not fair.  Bad things happen.  Some of them are not our fault and some of them are.  Alexander is surprised to learn from his mother at the end of the book that even in Australia people occasionally have a bad day.  In other words, we cannot escape the life that we have, but we can learn to live the life that we have with grace and joy and peace.

The wisdom from above that James refers to is about gaining the resources we need in our inner lives so that nothing that happens to us in our outer lives can rob us of peace of mind.

We live in the human community.  Just as Alexander lives in his family and in the social world of elementary school…we all live in community with others.  Alexander is a child.  Grown up spiritually healthy Christian adults are supposed to be able to negotiate Alexander’s day differently.

If we’re having Alexander’s day, and we are operating with wisdom from above, we are delighted that our brothers got the best toys and we got breakfast cereal.  If we are operating with wisdom from above, we are satisfied with our own work and don’t mind if the teacher gives all the praise to another student.  If we are operating with wisdom from above, we are pleased that our brothers got the shoes they wanted, and glad they don’t have cavities and willing to take the blame for the sibling fighting.  If we are operating with wisdom from above and our best friend betrays us, we do not wish them ill, we pray for them to be blessed.

If we are operating with wisdom from above, we are not escaping or fantasizing about escaping, we are dealing with the losses, the injustice, the stresses and the disappointments in life straight on, with joy and gratitude.

How much more do we prefer to just plan our escape or seek our revenge?  How little do we attend to the promise that introduces the entire book of Psalms, “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.”

Have you ever noticed that for some people, every day is a battle?  Jealousy and envy are sort of a first response.  It’s just one conflict and dispute after another.  In some communities, everything is a battle.  Conflict and dispute is just how things get done.  But conflict and dispute represent the wisdom of the world.  And James attributes this pattern of relationship to cravings at war within.

We so often try to stop our cravings…whatever we crave and whatever that craving represents.  But I think as human beings, as physical creatures, we are born to crave certain things.  Our survival depends on it.  We know that to maintain our physical health, we have to manage those cravings, and the most effective way is to learn to crave something that is good for us.

The same is true spiritually.

We begin to care for our spiritual health and growth the day we have had enough of terrible, horrible, no good very bad days that leave us bitter and resentful and angry.  We begin to care for our spiritual health and growth the day we have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day and we sit down and ask in all seriousness, “God, what would you have me learn from this?  What could I have done differently?  What do I need to do tomorrow to rebuild and restore the damage from this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day?  What resource do you have to give me peace when nothing I did caused the suffering I am experiencing?”

We begin to move toward spiritual health when we can asses on a regular basis:  “What is bothering me?”

We begin to move toward spiritual health when we desire love and peace and joy and mercy more than we desire all the things that selfish ambition and bitter envy seem to promise us.

The problem is not that we desire… it is what we desire.  If God’s wisdom is the object of our desire, it changes everything.

You have to want to be healthy to get healthy.  (I am preaching to myself here).

Exercise is not effective when you watch it on tv and don’t get up and do it.

Regretting that piece of cheesecake is not the same as never having eaten it.

There is no way in which seeking the wisdom of God is a quick fix or an easy answer.  It is an enormously satisfying answer, but it is challenging.  Because the central place where God’s wisdom stands over and against the wisdom of the world is the cross.

And the cross implies commitment.

You cannot meditate on God’s word day and night without a Bible, some bible teachers, and a commitment to study and prayer.

You cannot reflect on the true object of your desires without serious self reflection.

Psalm 1 concludes saying “the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”

I think the way of the wicked perishes not because of divine neglect toward humans, but because of human neglect of the divine.  God watches all those ways… God abandons no one.  In fact, at the end of a truly horrible, terrible, no good very bad day…of which some of us have had too many, God comes as comforter, like Alexander’s mom, to encourage us toward faithfulness to God when the world has been less than kind to us.

But we do not always turn to God for that comfort and wisdom.  Imagine how it much grieves God to watch our terrible, horrible, no good very bad days…individually and corporately…and see that we have learned nothing and changed nothing and gained nothing when we could have turned to God’s wisdom and stood through all the struggle like a tree planted by streams of water – living and fruitful.

I’ve been bothered recently by lots of unsettled feelings.  James is a challenging physician, and my spiritual check up does not reveal a picture of health.

So this is my prayer right now… and I invite you to join me in it… I want to delight in God’s wisdom, and live my life by it.  I want to want not the things of the world, but the radical sacrifice of the cross to define my life.  I want to want that, and today, I invite you to join me in expressing this desire with the prayer found on page 401 in the hymnal.