Wisdom - Part One

Proverbs 8
Wisdom's Call
1 Does not wisdom call out?
Does not understanding raise her voice?

2 On the heights along the way,
where the paths meet, she takes her stand;

3 beside the gates leading into the city,
at the entrances, she cries aloud:

4 "To you, O men, I call out;
I raise my voice to all mankind.

5 You who are simple, gain prudence;
you who are foolish, gain understanding.

6 Listen, for I have worthy things to say;
I open my lips to speak what is right.

7 My mouth speaks what is true,
for my lips detest wickedness.

8 All the words of my mouth are just;
none of them is crooked or perverse.

9 To the discerning all of them are right;
they are faultless to those who have knowledge.

10 Choose my instruction instead of silver,
knowledge rather than choice gold,

11 for wisdom is more precious than rubies,
and nothing you desire can compare with her.

12 "I, wisdom, dwell together with prudence;
I possess knowledge and discretion.

13 To fear the LORD is to hate evil;
I hate pride and arrogance,
evil behavior and perverse speech.

14 Counsel and sound judgment are mine;
I have understanding and power.

15 By me kings reign
and rulers make laws that are just;

16 by me princes govern,
and all nobles who rule on earth. [a]

17 I love those who love me,
and those who seek me find me.

18 With me are riches and honor,
enduring wealth and prosperity.

19 My fruit is better than fine gold;
what I yield surpasses choice silver.

20 I walk in the way of righteousness,
along the paths of justice,

21 bestowing wealth on those who love me
and making their treasuries full.

22 "The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works, [b] , [c]
before his deeds of old;

23 I was appointed [d] from eternity,
from the beginning, before the world began.

24 When there were no oceans, I was given birth,
when there were no springs abounding with water;

25 before the mountains were settled in place,
before the hills, I was given birth,

26 before he made the earth or its fields
or any of the dust of the world.

27 I was there when he set the heavens in place,
when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,

28 when he established the clouds above
and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,

29 when he gave the sea its boundary
so the waters would not overstep his command,
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.

30 Then I was the craftsman at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing always in his presence,

31 rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in mankind.

32 "Now then, my sons, listen to me;
blessed are those who keep my ways.

33 Listen to my instruction and be wise;
do not ignore it.

34 Blessed is the man who listens to me,
watching daily at my doors,
waiting at my doorway.

35 For whoever finds me finds life
and receives favor from the LORD.

36 But whoever fails to find me harms himself;
all who hate me love death."


Luke: I don't, I don't believe it.
Yoda: That is why you failed.


3The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" 6They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." 8Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

9At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"

11"No one, sir," she said.
"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

What is it all about? I have no idea. But I now know where to look.

What is It - this thing we are all searching for, this thing that gives meaning to our life, that answers all our questions, and that we, as a species, have been searching for since the dawn of time. We have always couched it in the terms of the knowledge available to us at the time - What makes the sky angry? Which falls faster, a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks? What is the sound of one hand clapping? Why is the sky blue? Are we alone in the universe? How do we make cold fusion? Should we clone human beings? We are always pushing the edge of the envelope, climbing the next hill to see if the horizon beyond is the one we have been looking for all along. But we never find it. Because, for the most part, we don't even know what It is.

To say that It is wisdom is to speak that cliche that we all know. The cartoon never shows the man walking up to the top of a hill and knocking on the NASA observatory there to ask the question, "Why am I here?" No, the cartoon always shows some mountaintop in the middle of nowhere and an aged WISE man sitting there with some pithy answer to the question - "Bring me a sandwich," or, "I just like the view," or some such. That we all know the answer to the question lies in our search for wisdom only points out the fact that we all know the definition of wisdom - the search for unknowable answers.

But there is an answer there. An answer has always been there. There is nothing hidden in the world, just undiscovered. As the saying goes, "In all situations there are three sides, your side, my side, and the truth." None of us have cornered the market on truth, and even if we had, that would only be our interpretation of that truth - not the actual truth itself. We are all only interpreters in life. So, where then, is the real truth? And how can we ever discern it?

This Sunday, after a nice breakfast at Zephyr Point Presbyterian Camp in South Lake Tahoe, NV, my pastor and I sat down with our youth group to hold a devotional. Our part in this devotional was to name our favorite Bible passage and explain what that passage meant to us. It was quite an eye opening experience. One of the youth selected the story of the woman who was to be stoned (printed above), the one that I remember as ending with the phrase, "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone." After reading the passage and explaining what it meant to them, our pastor asked us this question, "What was Jesus writing on the ground?" The Bible is less than forthcoming about what words He might have been scribbling in the dirt, but our pastor told us the answer anyway. "Jesus was writing the sins of every single man in the crowd holding a stone. When the men looked and saw their sins on the ground and realized that they could just as easily be condemned, they dropped their stones and walked away." This is not written anywhere in the Bible. It was from a sermon that my pastor had heard thirty years before and always remembered. This was wisdom - an unknowable answer, and a truth.

Where does knowledge such as this come from? And how do we know its true? Did this pastor find some long lost text with eyewitness accounts of this moment of time attesting to what was written on the ground? The answers lie in the passage from Proverbs.

"I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began," says Wisdom. Wisdom was around when God was making the world. Wisdom was there to watch and praise God as He made everything. Wisdom was, is, and ever shall be.

The answer, the Truth, Wisdom; its been here since the beginning, since before the beginning, waiting for us to find it - to know it - to learn of its truth. Wisdom is the thing for which we've been searching since we could walk - answers to unanswerable questions, the truth behind the truths we tell each other and see. It is the answer to the question, "Why am I here?" It is the truth of the nature of God and the moment of the resurrection. It is that which props up our faith.

We don't always trust in wisdom. We don't always know its extent or its purpose. We seek other authors of it - self help books, Shakespeare, bumper stickers. We are always trying to boil wisdom down into smaller sayings each trying to reach the thing that it can never reach, as if "What Would Jesus Do?" could even begin to explain the complexity of everything.

I often find myself sitting with a problem and hearing myself suggest taking it to God, I would laugh to myself and say, "What does God know about computers? Or cars? Or money problems?" As if God can only answer my questions in Aramaic and has never ridden anything faster than a donkey.

I am reminded of the scene in Empire Strikes Back where Luke Skywalker's X-Wing Fighter sinks into the bog. Yoda, who had been teaching Luke to use the force to raise rocks, and stones, and R2-D2, tells Luke that he has to now lift the X-Wing. Luke says that it is too big and Yoda tells him that that is all in his mind and that he has to unlearn that which he has learned. When Luke fails, he tells Yoda that it is impossible. And when Yoda succeeds in raising the X-Wing, Luke says, "I don't believe it," and Yoda replies, "That is why you failed."

We all want our wisdom to be easy to recognize and understand. But if it were so easy, then there would be no fools. I was foolish to think that a being that could create the universe wouldn't understand something like computers or cars or money. I am sure I have been foolish before to question that which God knows and understands.

There is only one being who could know all that wisdom is and has to teach us and that would be the being that created it in the first place - from whom all wisdom flows and returns and in whom all wisdom is revealed. God is our wisdom. He is the source of all knowledge and understanding, and all that we learn from wisdom will point us back to its source. God is wisdom.

Do you want to know what it is all about? I can't give you the answer. But I can tell you where to look.