Day 21: True Wisdom
The pursuit of knowledge is, ostensibly, why people come to a university. When I was an undergraduate student I found the avalanche of knowledge daunting, and the quest to know was a slipperier and slipperier path as I found that the more I knew, the more I realized that I didn’t know much. I also discovered the vanity of merely knowing about things. In that disillusionment, I began to prize wisdom even more.
But what is it to be wise, really? The word certainly bears a large semantic footprint. Most, speaking from a secular perspective, would argue that it includes prudence, judgment, and careful deliberation of action and speech. And as correct as they would be, an important caveat to that posture is necessary when considering the true nature of God’s wisdom.
Those who are “wise” as this world measures wisdom—the cautious, the cynical, the smart-talking doubters—end up fools in God’s eyes, while the folly of God is true wisdom. And while common-sense, painful experience, and an increasingly cynical consumer mentality all argue that we must “look before we leap,” God demands that we commit ourselves in order to gain wisdom in the first place. The world insists that the only sensible thing to do would be to give something a careful try before we buy in, but God tells us that wisdom cannot even begin until we buy in to His truth; by the world’s standards, we must leap not just before we look, we must leap to see anything at all.
Read: 1 Corinthians 3:18-19; Proverbs 9:10
Prayer:
Lord, teach me faith, I who am, in and of myself, faithless. Teach me to see that I must admit to my own blindness and receive you, unseeing, so that I might see. By your Holy Spirit empower me to hurl myself into you, trusting in your goodness to not only catch me but to set me on my feet in a broad place. And teach me the wisdom of surrendering my caution when it comes to pursuing you.
By Dr. David Thomas, College of Ministry