I finished reading Proverbs

And now I’m not sure what to read next. Tradition/wisdom? would dictate I read a New Testament book this time. Alissa Wilkinson tweeted bits of Proverbs sometime in January that made me want to read it. While the leader of our government and the people I’d trusted all through my childhood were out doing wacky things, Proverbs is a light into what happens ultimately. The wicked do bad stuff and they get their reward. The righteous do good stuff (which includes caring for the poor) and they get a reward, too.

Y’all probably know I read a lot of romance novels. The thing that a genre romance novel promises is that you get a HEA — a happily ever after. The hero and heroine are supposed to be characters that are both relatable and aspirational…i.e., if they don’t deserve true love, they at least have an epiphany to realize how fortunate they are to get a chance at it anyway; and some of them are totally awesome plan daring escapes and defeat bad guys. This part is getting weird. In my favorite romances, there’s always some nuance. The character has to be pushed into being truly heroic. They don’t always want to feel their feelings and deal with the vulnerability that trusting a relationship will continue creates. But by the end of the book, to paraphrase one of my favorite authors, you trust that the main characters will, you know, cleave to each other, through all the ups and downs of life. It’s not really that they are promised happily ever after — we know that real life has lots of sadness along with it — but that they are vulnerable and not-alone ever after.

All that to say, though there’s no plot in Proverbs (BUT I COULD TOTALLY WRITE A FANFIC FOR THE PROVERBS 31 LADY), I just felt like I was getting a promise of a HEA. The righteous will be rewarded, God’s heart for justice and mercy is revealed, and the wicked will get their just rewards. It helped to read that every day (or every other day).

But now I’m done and I’m not sure what to read next. Our pastors are preaching through Acts so I don’t want to spoil it. (jk I’ve read it before but I don’t want to get ahead and read it all and then check out during the sermons.) Maybe I’ll just pick an short epistle and read it over and over. Proverbs was definitive, but now I’m thinking I need more tension — ultimate reality is what I need to cling to but also, 2017 America with a black family has some pretty urgent needs of its own. Anyway, you can tell me what you think would be good and I’ll take it under advisement. That’s all.