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With so much that's going on in the world right now, how as Christians do we live hopefully in that and how do we live wisely? It forces us to think about what do we trust in? Where have we put our hope for the past years? And where are we going to put our hope? When everything else is crumbling around us, we can be hopeful because of the Lord's great love. Actually being constantly fed scripture in the midst of difficulty I think is so important.
The Bible is such a source of wisdom for us to try and find out how did people back then look to God and how can we now learn from that. It's about how we orientate our lives. We don't look at the chaos and the darkness and the evil. We look towards God. True wisdom recognizes the reality of the limitations of human wisdom. You're listening to the Rooted Podcast from Bible Society.
In each series, we take a closer look at a theme or book of the Bible and explore its relevance in our lives today. This is our series on Proverbs. Hey everyone, welcome back to The Rooted Podcast. I'm Noelle, and I'm here today with Mark, as usual, and we're joined by Leonie, who is our guest today. We love Leonie. She's been on the podcast before, and she's written for many editions of Rooted. She's a Bible communicator at Bible Society.
And yeah, we asked her to come join us for this episode because we're going to do something a little bit different today. Before we get into that, if you don't know what Rooted is, if you're interested in it at all, it's a journal that Bible Society puts together. We put together a new journal every other month on a different book or theme in the Bible, and you can subscribe to it just to go deeper into Scripture and really start to understand it better. So if you're interested in that, you can go to biblesociety.org.uk forward slash rooted.
Also, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. We're so grateful that you're here. If you'd like to leave us a review or rating or send us in any questions, we always love to hear from you. So you can do that at biblesociety.org.uk forward slash rooted questions. But for today's episode, we wanted to focus on something a bit different that we've maybe a little bit touched on in the Proverbs series so far, but that is a bit fresh. And this is our last episode in this series, so we thought.
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it would be good to touch on this. Proverbs does have a lot of practical wisdom, but also we want to talk a bit about how it affects us in our day-to-day lives, specifically with so much that's going on in the world right now. You can open up the news and it's not a very positive place to be, and it can be quite stressful and quite anxiety inducing. And we know that there are lots of people who right now are struggling to sort of
navigate that reality of how do we be people who are constantly hearing just awful news and things that are just crazy going on in the world. And how as Christians do we live hopefully in that? And how do we live wisely? How do we navigate that? So we wanted to sort of have a conversation about what Proverbs has to say about living wisely in these kinds of circumstances, but also the rest of the wisdom literature in the Bible and even the New Testament, because there's so much in scripture for us.
to learn from and that can help us live well. We could just start maybe, Marc and Leonie, what is your sort of relationship with the news? How are you sort of dealing with this right now?
Yeah, thanks Noel. Thanks for having me as well. I'm actually really excited to have this conversation. There is so much wisdom in the Bible and even though the world seems like it's in a weird place right now, I think, yeah, there's so much that we can learn from scripture. But yeah, I think I've always enjoyed reading the news. I find it interesting to kind of keep up to date with stuff.
But I think recently I've just found myself in this spiral of just feeling really worried about the news and then reading more of it and then like feeling even more worried about it and then reading even more and then, you know, social media adds to that. And yeah, I feel like it's not been that great recently. And I've been trying to kind of find positives, but there aren't that many out there. And it just feels like the world is in a bit of a
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an unbalanced place at the moment, which can be scary, I think. Yeah. Yeah. There's even a word for it, isn't it? It's doom scrolling. That's what you're doing, Leonie, I think. know, just, and part of it is just the way the algorithms are constructed just to drive you from one bit of news to another bit of news because they learn what you're interested in and they feed you.
the same sort of content all the time. And so it's a sort of self-reinforcing negative feedback loop, isn't it? And it can be quite damaging. It can be quite dangerous to our mental health, I think sometimes. And, you know, addictive. But I share your feelings, to be honest. I think over the last, what, couple of years maybe, we've seen a kind of breakdown in
the sort of things that we assumed were good and right and that people generally believed in. And now people are questioning essentials in a way that I find surprising and depressing. You know, I see causes which I would have taken for granted were just good and right. And now they are not commonly accepted anymore. And that's worrying.
Yeah, that really is worrying and it disturbs me and it distresses me sometimes. I mean, yeah, the world is a scary place at the moment. And I think we're privileged to live in a country that is relatively safe compared to so many other places in the world. And that is relatively stable compared to so many other places in the world. And we're feeling this. And I think that's part of being part of kind of a global community as well. What happens in other parts of the world?
impacts us and impacts our kind of day-to-day life. And I think we're going to talk a lot about kind of proverbs and how it gives wisdom for the day-to-day as well as for the big picture. And so think that's really exciting. But I think what you saying, Mark, about kind of these values and these institutions that have been so constant, kind of crumbling, it forces us to think about, you know, what do we trust in? You know, where have we put our hope for the past, you know, years?
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And where are we going to put our hope next? I think that's a really challenging question to think about. is really interesting, isn't it? And I think one of the things that can help is, I suppose, a sense of history and a knowledge of history. I mean, there is this thing called the myth of progress, which the myth is that things are always going to get better and that we're on a sort of linear upward trend.
and that the world is going to get more peaceful, it's going get more prosperous, we're going to solve all our problems because we are clever people and we have scientists and technologists and people like that and they will solve all our problems. And I think the Bible is not as optimistic, to be honest, as that. I think the Bible is very realistic about how people act, what people's motivations are, and I think
The biblical hope is not really in human beings saving themselves, it's in God saving us. Yeah, I think for me, I'm just noticing the amount I think of information that we can know at once is obviously quite a new thing, that we could know about things going on all over the world. And just wondering whether that's actually healthy for me to have so much information that is often negative or troubling, especially about injustice in the world.
And I think, for me personally, I think I can have quite a logical brain to it a lot of the time. And my heart can be quite removed actually, where I just think, well, as a Christian, I'm called to lament but then refuse discouragement, and I'm called to pray. James says that my prayers are powerful and effective, and so I'm going to pray, and that's what I'm going to do. But I think that often I can actually have this sort of logical attitude. Does that make sense? Where I think,
my compassion can often be lacking because I know what to do, if that makes sense as a Christian. So I think that's where I'm at a little bit. So I'm looking forward to having this conversation just to hear more of everyone's hearts, I suppose one of the things is that we do know more about what's happening in the world, and that has its effect on our emotions. And we can suffer from compassion fatigue, there's no doubt about that.
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But if you look at the actual facts, the actual figures, there are far fewer people dying in wars now than there were a few decades ago. know, objectively, the world is a more peaceful place. Objectively, there are fewer people dying of hunger. Objectively, the world is more prosperous. The world is richer. It's just that we are fed all this information and we don't
We don't really think that. I mean, it's true, but we don't really think that. That's not how we experience the world. And so, that kind of skews how we feel about things. And I think we need to bear that in mind when we have this discussion and when we pray, when we think about this. So, let's talk a bit about what the Bible says and what Scripture says. This is the Proverb series. So, we've got a few Proverbs just to talk through that sort of speak about how the Lord comes into
these sorts of situations and how we should think about them. So one that I love, which is just sort of a main proverb that people know, but trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight. Proverbs 3, 5 to 6. And obviously I think we think about that proverb a lot in terms of like my life and my path, but trusting in the Lord with all of my heart and leaning not on my own understanding is a huge feat actually.
especially when we are seeing what's happening in the world, because my own understanding is not really probably able to see any hope or see any positivity in all of it, but to trust in the Lord and lean instead on his sort of, what he's telling us, his understanding, his way, actually I think changes a lot. But yeah, as I'm saying, easier said than done, easier to just read that than to actually do it, I think.
Definitely. I think a proverb that's stood out to me recently is Proverbs 29, 21, and it says, of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe. And I think for me currently that's not necessarily kind of physical safety, but also just kind of feeling secure, feeling peaceful, at ease or at rest in God rather than.
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kind of the chaos or the kind of uncertainty that I feel when I read the news or when I think about kind of the future. Yeah, I think both of those verses are really important and I think they're really interesting. And I think we've said before in the series that these verses aren't meant to be kind of universal doctrinal.
statements so that if you trust in the Lord with all your heart and lead not on your own understanding, nothing bad is ever going to happen to you. Because that's obviously not true. I think it comes back to this idea of Proverbs being practical wisdom and dealing with attitudes of mind and heart. So it's about how we orientate our lives. And we don't look
at the chaos and the darkness and the evil. We look towards God and we know that things aren't going to go well for us all the time. We know that things aren't going to go well for the world all the time. But nevertheless, there is this overarching sense of trust in God and this overall faith that we are in God's hands whatever happens. I think one of the most moving things I've seen in
in terms of sort Bible engagement and the Bible speaking into people's lives is at the beginning of the Ukrainian War where the Ukraine Bible Society shared a video of people reading verses from Psalm, I think it was Psalm 31, which just spoke into their situation. And they talked about, you know, being a city under siege at the time when cities were being besieged. And it was just this incredible
expression of faith in God using the words of Scripture in spite of the fact that they were going through these terrible times and of course they still are. And that just speaks to me about how the Bible, how Proverbs, and I've grown to love Proverbs even more actually just through the course of this series. I think it's fantastic. But not just the Proverbs, but the whole of Scripture speaks of God's care for us no matter what might be going on in our lives.
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What you said is so important too, because actually being constantly fed scripture in the midst of difficulty, I think is so important. I've found that listening to it is actually really helpful as well. If I'm constantly hearing the Word of God, it just sets me up to just be having a different mindset throughout my day, because I've heard so much goodness and I've heard so much about God.
But if you then do read the news or you think about something else, you're sort of already in the mindset of, but God is the one that I trust or God is powerful or God can make a difference here. God has a solution to this problem. Yeah. So I think so much of it is our mindset as well, if we're thinking like Him or if we're just thinking like humanity and thinking like us. Absolutely. It gives a different perspective, doesn't it?
And it's kind of the idea that we see the world through Scripture. And I think that's, it's so important. And it's such a challenge for me because often the first thing I do when I get up in the morning is I'll make a cup of tea and then I'll scroll through my news apps. And that kind of sets the tone for the day, doesn't it? But actually, you know, if I, the times where I do kind of make a cup of tea and sit down with my Bible, regardless of what I'm reading in it, it's the story of God and, you know, it's the story of
of how God intervenes in our world. I actually love the fact that we can go back into scripture and the people who wrote it and the people that we're reading about went through the same things that we're going through. You know, like you were saying, Mark, the Psalms that talk about being under siege. You know, the world has always seen, you know, difficult times and times of suffering and times of uncertainty.
And that's recorded in the Bible. The Bible isn't just a fairy tale of, you know, it's all happy-clappy. But actually the Bible is a story of humanity going through some really dark times. And actually it's a story of how people in those dark times look to God. And I think that's why I'm like, actually the Bible is such a source of wisdom for us to try and find out how did people back then look to God and how can we now, you know, learn from that.
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and do the same thing. And I think as well, just, you know, thinking about the fact that we're part of Bible society as well. And I'm in a room surrounded by Bibles, which is great. But, you know, this organization has existed for 200 years. And for 200 years, you know, through everything that's happened in the past 200 years, people have looked to the Bible and found hope and comfort. And I think that's why I'm like, oh, we need to, that's where we need to go for our hope and for our wisdom to live.
in these times. Yeah, that's really good. So what about some other wisdom literature? So we do have Proverbs, but we also have this Psalm 46, which is brilliant. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. And it goes on, therefore we will not fear that the earth be removed and that the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. And it goes on just to talk about, yeah, the Lord being
there for us. so I think there's so much throughout Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, there's so many different sort of little pieces of wisdom and just hope and peace and promises about who God is that we can really believe and grab hold of. yeah. I found Ecclesiastes weirdly comforting and it's not known for being a comforting book.
But think a couple of weeks ago, was, yeah, just a bit worried about everything. And reading Ecclesiastes 3, where it says there is a time for everything. And then it kind of lists, you know, there is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant, a time to uproot, a time for war and a time for peace. And just that reminder of things that happening now are not new. You know, the things that happening now are up for still kind of
have been part of human experience for a long time. But then also that verse in Ecclesiastes 3.11 of God has made everything beautiful in its time and He's also set eternity in human heart. And just that idea of nothing is new and yet God is still in that and He's still working through that. I've just found that really encouraging recently of just
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remembering that God is still at work. Yeah, I think that's brilliant. The one that I'd put in there is Lamentations, and I'm not even sure, is Lamentations Wisdom Literature? I ought to know, I don't know, I'm afraid. But there's that great hymn that we sing, isn't there? Great is thy faithfulness, you know, morning by morning you mercies I see. And that's a direct lift from Lamentations, chapter three.
And Lamentations is just an awful book in all sorts of ways. got some terrible stories and it arises from the experience of the sack of Jerusalem and these terrible scenes that accompany that. And the writer, sometimes said to be Jeremiah, says, I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope." And that word hope is really important, I think. And then he goes on, because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed for His compassions. Never fail, they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. That's the line of the hymn. And I think that what we kind of bring to the table as Christians is this sense of hope.
when everything else is crumbling around us, we can be hopeful because of the Lord's great love. Yeah, and it's not denying reality. The writer of Lamentations is lamenting what is happening to them in that time, but it's kind of that. yet, there is still that sense of hope and trust, even though the writer probably couldn't see.
how everything is going to turn out. But there is still that kind of core of trust. I think that's a real challenge for us. So I was thinking about a bit of church history and that is when the city of Rome was sacked by the Goths, by the Visigoths under Alaric in 410 AD. And it was just
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just sit this seismic event because Rome was Rome and Rome was, you know, the most significant city in the world. It wasn't at that stage, the capital of the Roman Empire that had moved to Constantinople by then, but not long before then. And the Visigoths came and they sacked the place basically. And it was like the end of the world. know, nobody could ever have imagined that Rome
would ever fall, and then here it was, it was, you know, it was lay waste. And St. Augustine, one of the really great church fathers, wrote a book called The City of God. And he did that in part to try and reassure people that even though earthly empires crumbled, even though nothing that
humans built would ever last for eternity. There was a different city, there was the city of God, and Christians are part of that city of God. And that city was eternal and that city would never fail and never fall. And I just wonder if there's something there which we perhaps need to recover because
Obviously, Christians live in the world, we live in society, and we assume that society is going to go on as it always has done. We assume that our institutions are solid and sound and all the rest of it. And then we think, well, you know, they might not be. Maybe climate change is going to change everything about how we live. Maybe there's going to be a war, maybe this, maybe that, whatever.
the foundations are crumbling, the foundations, it seems, are being shaken, but the city of God remains. And so, we live in the light of that different reality. No matter what else changes, that will not change. It reminds me a bit, I've been reading through Daniel, and it reminds me a bit of Daniel's situation, actually. especially in the
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second half of Daniel when you get into sort of his dreams and his visions. There are verses that say that Daniel is so disturbed by what he's seeing and he's in captivity and he's seeing these visions that are basically saying Israel is going to be judged by these rulers and empires that are going to come into power. But I was just reading last night at the end of, I think it's the end of verse eight, it says he was deeply troubled but then he got up and he went about the king's business because he was working under the king.
And I thought to myself, how was he able to do that? How was he able to see all of this evil going on around him and even be getting visions from God about these horrible things that would be happening to his people and then get up and still go about basically serving God under a king that was keeping him in captivity? And I think what you're saying, Mark, of just being so aware that there is another
kingdom that I belong to, there is another person, there is a person, God, who's watching over me. It actually enables us to keep going, even knowing that there's all of this evil going on around us. So think that's really good. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's important, isn't it, to remember that this world is not all there is. I think it's again, that's where that hope comes in, isn't it? We are strangers and exiles in this world.
And we have hope for so much more, you know, of a new heaven and the new earth where there is no more death or mourning or wars or conflict or mental health crises or unemployment. You know, all of those things that seem so big now actually won't last. And similarly, you know, that the kingdoms of this world, the rulers of this world, you know, like grass, they will fade away, I think it says in one of the Psalms, like it
in the big picture, it actually comes to nothing. I think that's really encouraging. It's nice that you mentioned Daniel and Noel, because I was thinking about one of the stories in the book of Daniel about the exiles who've been taken away to Babylon. It's Daniel and his three friends. I mean, that must have been a horrible situation for them to live in a country that wasn't their own, to have been taken away from their families.
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and they have been asked by the king to worship foreign gods and they refuse. And the king says, you know, I'm going to throw you into a fiery furnace. The friends of Daniel, they say, if we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it and he will deliver us from your majesty's hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know your majesty.
we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up. And I think it's that even if he does not, that really kind of speaks to me because we live in a world where we trust in God and we pray. And sometimes in this world, we don't see God intervene where we would like him to. You sometimes we find ourselves in situations where, you know, we find it difficult to trust God. We find it difficult to see him at work. And I think it's that
that trust that these three friends have that even if God does not intervene, we will still only worship Him, we will still only trust in Him. And again, it's just one of those stories in the Bible from so many years ago that is still so relevant to us today. And yeah, I hope that, you know, if things in the world don't turn out the way I hope they will, if things do get worse, I hope that I have enough faith to kind of say the same thing.
you know, if God does not intervene, if He does not deliver us, I will still, you know, keep trusting in Him. I think this is something that we Christians can actually offer to the world right now. We can actually offer to our society right now, because it is such a message of hope, and it's such a message of comfort and assurance. And at the same time, it's quite clear-eyed as well. It's not saying, you know, don't worry, everything's going to be fine. It's saying,
if you are distressed by what's happening in the world, if you feel as though your roots are being cut away, or if you feel that your foundations are being shaken, well, maybe your foundations were built on sand instead of on the rock. So, go here, come and just engage with the Bible, come and meet Jesus, come and be part of a
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community of Jesus-following people who can give you that foundation in life that maybe you haven't had so far. And people who are struggling because they are maybe a bit ruthless, maybe they're a bit philosophically adrift, if you like, I think can come and they can find in the gospel something which really speaks to their need.
you've said it's something that sets us apart is that we have this peace. it doesn't, yeah, like you've said, it doesn't mean that we don't see what's going on and it can't bother us. But actually we have trust and we have hope that would be non-existent. I don't know what I would possibly be hoping in or having any sort of peace in if it weren't for the Lord. So I think it is a sort of evangelistic thing almost without really trying to be too much.
Yeah, exactly. I think that's what I'm trying to say really. But the other thing to say, I think, is that Christian faith doesn't involve retreating from the world. It involves even more engagement with the world, actually. I mean, I'm thinking about a book I came across a while ago called The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher, subtitled A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation.
It's argument basically is that the world is not in a very good place and the strategy for Christians is basically to form virtuous communities where you stand off to one side of what's going on in the world and you just concentrate basically on building communities of moral resistance as it were. And the Benedict option is, well it's a Benedict
building monastic communities basically and having a rule of life and all that sort of thing. I understand where that's coming from and I'm not saying it's entirely untrue, but I really resist the idea that we're called to withdraw from the world. I don't think that's right at all. know, Proverbs is about living in community. You know, a whole lot of it is about how you are with other people, how you are responsible for other people.
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and how you engage with other people. And it's about community and your responsibilities to the community. And I don't think we can forget about that in the way that we go through the world. We are responsible for our brothers and sisters. We are our brothers' keepers. Definitely. And that's what Jesus said to his disciples as well. Jesus was such a realist as well. You know, when he said, in this world you will have trouble, but I have overcome the world.
But also I'm sending you out as sheep among wolves, you know, he was very realistic about the suffering that his disciples would face. But he didn't say go and hide. You know, he didn't say go and, you know, live separately or anything like that. He said go and make disciples, you know, go into the world. Yeah, no, I agree.
My husband was telling a story at church of the early Christians who were in Rome. they often, if there was a baby born with a defect, what they would do is they would often just put them out onto the streets because they didn't, that was it. They didn't try to save them. They didn't try to do anything about them. They would just put them on the streets to die. And he was saying that what the Christians would do is instead of sort of, I imagine what might happen today is we would sort of, maybe we would fight or we would
post some things about how awful it was. We might do a bunch of different things, but what the Christians would do then is they would just go in the night and when the babies had been laid out, they would collect them and they would take them in and take care of them. And it really touched me because it's very powerful influence, but it's not loud and in your face, but it's making a huge difference. It just made me think about how I think a lot of the times when we do listen to the news, we can feel quite powerless.
that we can't do anything and that all we can do is pray. While prayer is massively important and extremely powerful, and I think sometimes we don't understand just how powerful it is, there's also so much that we can do. It's a lie to believe that we can't really do much about the situations that are going on in the world. Even the wars, we can give financially. We could go try and help in person and give aid. There are things that we could actually do.
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We can be a voice in our community, like we're saying, of hope and of peace that helps other people who are struggling with it. And that's just the wars. mean, if you're thinking about the climate crisis, like there are so many different things that we can do practically that will make a huge difference. So do you think that's really important to remember? Because I also think that is something that helps with anxiety. Like I think sometimes you have anxiety about something. If you actually do something about it, practically it does help. I think again, that's a challenge with
the amount of information that is thrown at us. Because I'm also, I'm a fixer. If I see a problem, I like to fix it. Just get on with it, just deal with it and just fix it. But the problem is when I read about wars, about all the stuff that's going on in the world, I can't fix it. This is the problem. But I need to go back to what scripture says and remember that it's not my job to fix the world.
You know, and that's what Proverbs is so good for in terms of it tells us, you know, your job, you know, here and now is to live wisely, to, you know, trust God for the small things, to work hard, to act with love and compassion. You know, all those smaller things that I can do here and now that are so much more impactful than me trying to figure out, you know, what's going to happen to the whole world.
because that's not really my job, that's God's job. And so yeah, I found that really helpful and I think one of the Proverbs that I've always found really helpful to pray, and I think it is a prayer, in Proverbs 30, verses 7 to 9, it says,
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And it's such a simple prayer of, you know, let me live a good life. You know, let me be honorable in God's sight. Don't make me suffer, you know, but also don't give me too much. Just give me what I need every day. And I think that's such a good prayer when we feel overwhelmed is just to pray, you know, God, just give me what I need here and now to live a good life before you and I'll let you deal with the rest.
I was reminded of EU version's announcement of its top Bible verse of 2024. The verse that users engaged with most was Philippians 4.6, do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And I just thought that was a really interesting verse, actually, because
It says don't be anxious about everything, and we've been talking about anxiety, but he seems to be suggesting not just that you stop being anxious, but that you actually do something with your anxiety. So, in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. So, he's not recommending a kind of withdrawal from the world. He's recommending a sort of engagement with the world.
from a purely Christian point of view, from a uniquely Christian point of view. So you can do things, but do them with the help of God. And so I think it's about refusing to be terrified or depressed by the things that are on our screens. And that's not a sign that we don't care about things. It's just a sign that we know that there are things that we can't do anything about. And that's okay. We can rest with that because
we live and we work and we walk in the sight of God. And really, there are things that are too big for us, but they're never too big for Him.
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I think that's really helpful, Mark. think, you know, it's so easy to kind of say to yourself, don't be anxious. But, you know, with the 24-7 kind of news cycle, that's really, it's really hard not to be anxious. And it's not just, you know, things happening out there in the world. It's also, you know, we can have things going on personally in our lives, you know, whether that's ill health or, you know, work or whatever it is, it's really easy.
to let that kind of fester and to let that kind of keep us up at night. But I like what you're saying, Mark, in terms of there is something we can do and that is to bring it to God. I was reading a book, I'd really recommend it actually, it's a book called The Good Life in the Last Days and it's all about how do we live here and now knowing that this world is, you know, it's coming to an end.
And it had a really helpful sentence where it says, true wisdom recognizes the reality of the limitations of human wisdom. And so there is wisdom in acknowledging that we don't have all of the wisdom, you we don't know everything. And I think that's that, it's that balance, isn't it, of me kind of reading the news and being informed and being interested, but then also saying, actually, there's a lot going on behind the scenes that I don't understand.
I won't understand that it's out of my control and those are the things I'm going to bring to God. And it's that balance, I think, that I really need to work on. yeah, I've been really challenged about recently. And that's very proverbs, isn't it? Yeah, it is. We'll end there. Thank you both so much for this great conversation. So yeah, just to sort of end, think we're saying that living wisely
in this time where we're seeing evil all around the world, looks like not necessarily pulling away from it, but being engaged in it, doing what we can, but also acknowledging that we can't do everything and trusting God with the things that we can't do and having wisdom in how much we sort of engage with those things and in how much we make sure that we are letting the Bible guide us and living hopefully as well, trusting that
Bible Society (39:29.406)
This isn't forever, that these sort of kingdoms and empires and things are going to pass away, but that God's kingdom remains and that we have another city that we're going to. Yeah, that's really good. Thank you both. And thank you, Leonie, for joining us. Thank you so much. That's been great. Great. Thanks for having me again. So yeah, this is the end of the Proverbs series. Thank you so much for listening. We really hope you enjoyed this series. We're going to be back at the end of March with our next series, which will be all about John's gospel.
We'll see you then. Thank you so much for listening.
Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rooted Podcast. To find out more about Bible Society's mission to invite people to discover the Bible for themselves in England, Wales and around the world, visit biblesociety.org.uk.