Wednesday, April 13, 2011

To Pluck or Not to Pluck

A while back I wrote about God speaking to me. Sometimes I recognize when He is speaking to me, but I'm sure there are times that I am too "busy" to listen. I really hope not, but I'm human, and fallible, so I'm sure I have. Today though, God spoke pretty clearly to me, in a direct answer to something I asked Him.

For the last 20 years, give or take, I have had a few gray hairs pop up on my head. There were only about three of them the first ten years, and I routinely plucked them, but they have slowly been increasing. I still pluck the obvious ones, but I know that if I continue to pluck all of them, I won't have a lot of hair soon! There are not enough gray hairs to warrant dying my hair, and since I love my hair color, I don't want to take a chance on ending up with a bad dye job.

This brings me to my conversation with God this morning. Right after my shower, as I was plucking a couple stubborn gray hairs that were standing straight up toward the back of my head, I remembered hearing some time ago a verse in the Bible about gray hair being a crown of glory. I told God right then and there that I would love to be able to find that verse, and that if gray hair is a crown of glory, I wouldn't mind going gray so much.

After my shower, it was time for my daily devotions and Bible time. I read two short devotional pages, then I am working on reading the Bible through in a year. First I read the devotion in my Daily Guideposts (a gift from my dear friend Maxine). Next I read today's entry in "Open Windows" (a small periodical published by LifeWay).

For today's devotions, "Open Windows" had me read Proverbs 16:27-32. The main focus of today's devotions focused on verse 32, but imagine my delight when I read verse 31. Remember my question to God? Well, here was His response to me:

The silver-haired head is a crown of glory,
If it is found in the way of righteousness. Proverbs 16:31.

I asked God to show me the verse, and there it was. I didn't have to go digging through the Bible. I didn't have to look at the concordance. I read the "assigned" verse, and there it was.

Now I just have to keep working on the righteousness part.