He Shoulders Responsibility
He shoulders responsibility and is called the Wonderful Adviser. Isaiah 9:6, NET
Three books shaped my early childhood: the Bible my great-grandmother gave me the Christmas I was seven years old, my mother’s girlhood copy of Little Women, and my grandfather’s thick and heavy Webster’s Dictionary. I read them all until the pages grew soft like velvet.
The word responsibility inspired me long before I knew I was an Enneagram 1 or that Achiever and Responsibility were two of my five top themes in the Clifton Strengthsfinders assessment.
Responsibility- the quality or state of being responsible: such as moral, legal, or mental accountability; reliability, trustworthiness. Synonyms: duty, task, function, job, role, place, charge, business, onus, burden, liability, accountability, answerability, province. And curiously, in British English informal, pigeon.
But even responsible people need a Wonderful Adviser.
The Hebrew word translated as responsibility by NET scholars is מִשְׂרָה miśrâ (h4951, Strong’s) and means rule, dominion, government. Handel’s Messiah famously proclaims Isaiah’s prophetic words about the Savior: “for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders.”
Government takes many forms. National government, educational government, workplace government, family government, church government, popular crowd government, playground government. Government of one’s own emotions, thoughts, or actions. Every government is made up of human hearts, and every human heart is governor of something.
We need wonderful advice to shoulder all the responsibility this life requires. What good news that there is One who shoulders it all and invites every heart into His privy counsel!
This is shout-from-the-mountaintops-worthy news.
Lord, advise me this new year, every day and in every way. Amen.
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
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