Long before Lancaster Community Church became part of my routine, I used to have my own version of “L.C.C.”: the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, coffee and cigarettes. Each Sunday morning I could be found on the patio doing the local newspaper’s crossword puzzle – in pen! I did this religiously for many years.

I loved making the overlapping, intersecting words fit together and filling in each square with confidence. Did you know crossword puzzles are diagonally symmetrical – the pattern is the same when rotated 180 degrees? Or that every answer must be longer than two characters? That the same word is never used in both the clue and the answer, or used twice in the same puzzle?

Now, I find that God’s Word uses the same words over and over as I follow cross references instead of across and down clues. I love to extrapolate the meaning of a verse by holding it up to other passages.

For instance, in Psalm 101:1 (NASB) I’ve been learning about God’s lovingkindness:

I will sing of lovingkindness and justice,
To You, O LORD, I will sing praises.

This Hebrew word for “sing” (shiyr) is used for strolling minstrel singers who travel from house to house and town to town. “Do I sing of lovingkindness everywhere I go?” I asked myself. This is a rhetorical question, by the way. I’m not going to tell you my answer!

Proverbs 19:22 uses the same word for lovingkindness (checed), as stated so simply in the New Living Translation:

Loyalty makes a person attractive.
And it is better to be poor than dishonest.

Loyalty, lovingkindness, goodness and faithfulness are what make us attractive to our neighbors, to our spouses, to our family. So much for the fancy clothes, nice car and big house! What people really want is a good friend. Proverbs 19:1 (NIV) says,

Better a poor man whose walk is blameless
than a fool whose lips are perverse.

How many times have I twisted my words for my own gain or told a little crooked lie as I try to get my story straight? This question will also go unanswered.

Now follow “the blameless walk” back to Psalm 101:2 –

I will give heed to the blameless way –
When will You come to me?
I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart.

“Within my house” is where I need the Lord most, where I long to walk blamelessly but instead limp lamely. Do the ones who deserve my best often see me at my worst? This question needs no response.

Our physical homes are merely sticks and stones built by human hands. Proverbs 19:14 says the people inside bring true wealth:

House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers,
But a prudent wife is from the LORD.

That prudent wife from Proverbs 19?

She’s the same blameless dame from Psalm 101.

The same word, sakal, is used in both verses. As I bounce between Psalms 101 and Proverbs 19, the words intersect and overlap to form a word picture of the perfect, prudent wife:

She is wise and circumspect. She is aware of her circumstances and mindful of consequences. She is careful, sensible and discreet. She does the right thing at the right time with sound judgment. She is insightful. She ponders the case instead of jumping to conclusions.

Does she look like me? It’s a rhetorical question! The answer is painfully obvious.

It’s a good thing this prudence is from the Lord, because I certainly don’t have it in my natural self. Thankfully, I do have Good Godly Girlfriends and the fellowship of our Neighborhood Cafe, where together we pray,

Give my husband a new wife, and let it be me.

From The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormy Omartian