What an authentic life looks like…

Grey hair is a mark of distinction,
the award for a God-loyal life. Proverbs 16:31

We’ll start here today, shall we? This verse jumped out at me on my first read through this chapter. Of course, it did. I’m pretty sensitive about my grey hair, so anything that endorses it must be a good thing, right? I’ve been grey for a good while now. Gave up the battle to cover it long ago. And that decision has been met with a pretty mixed reaction. I’ve certainly been judged as older than I am because of it. Which leads me to say that this verse seems in our modern world to apply to men more than women. We see men with grey hair as distinguished. A bit George Clooney. But women? Well, they’ve just given up. They’re not looking after themselves. They’re not putting the effort in any more.

Just a thought. We could change that perception. Starting with our own.

Anyway, back to Proverbs 16. There’s an awful lot here about authentic living and what that looks like. Which takes me back to grey hair actually. Because an awful lot of women my age are grey. They just choose to hide it. Whereas I life to keep it real.

So let’s start by painting a picture of the opposite of an authentic life:-

The most important thing is what looks good on the outside. This life is surrounded by arrogance and pretence. Constant comparisons. Having plenty of money matters more than what you had to do to get it. You just do or don’t do what you can get away with at work. You say whatever suits your purposes. Money matters more than pretty much everything else. You set yourself up on a pedestal and then it takes all your effort to make sure you never fall off (which you inevitably do, right? Because as we all know, ‘Pride comes before a fall’ – which is from this chapter by the way. Verse 18). You crave your moment in the limelight – you hang around with all the popular people. You are fascinated by celebrity. It really is who you know. You look to bring other people down any way you can – gossip, arguments, breaking up friendships.

This is the lifestyle our world is promoting. Subtly through the realities of everyday living and more openly through the media and advertising. We lap it up. We love it. We buy into it. We need to wake up to what is happening.

This is an authentic life:-

You care more about what’s on the inside than the outside. You understand God’s place in the world and in your life and work. You value love and truth above everything else. You’d rather do things the right way than cut corners. You’ll probably never be rich. You make a good leader, because people are drawn to your life and are inspired and motivated by it. People trust you. They trust what you have to say. You’re like spring rain and sunshine – you invigorate people’s lives. You take life seriously and make every moment count.

This is what we’re talking about.