Wisdom

“to know wisdom and instruction, to discern the sayings of understanding.”  Proverbs 1:2

Wisdom – Do you remember Alice’s world?  One pill makes you taller and one pill makes you small.  The red bottle does one thing, the blue does another.  Sometimes we let the imagery of alternatives seep into God’s view of the world.  We begin to think that there are two kinds of wisdom – God’s kind and Man’s kind.  But the Bible doesn’t have much to do with Alice in Wonderland.  The Bible is about reality.  And in God’s reality, there is only one kind of wisdom.  Everything else is foolishness.

The Hebrew word hochmah is used more than 100 times in Scripture.  Wisdom is a primary attribute of God Himself.  If you don’t have God’s wisdom on things, you just don’t understand at all.  That’s why Proverbs often contrasts the fool with wisdom.  There is no such thing as human wisdom on earthly matters.  There is only God’s way or no way.

This concept is really foreign to us.  We talk all the time about the wisdom of the ages, about social or political wisdom or about wise men and women.  We think wisdom is the result of education.  But we might as well be talking about Alice’s pills if we think that anyone is wise without God.  Wisdom is the perception of truth and the decision to act accordingly.  Wisdom is a gift from God.  No matter how intelligent or ingenious we might think we are, unless we are given the Truth from the Creator of the Universe, we are nothing more than fools.  In the Hebrew world, wisdom has nothing to do with gathering information.  Wisdom is a gift that brings submission and obedience to God.  It’s not what you know.  It’s who you know.

Today you will be faced with decisions that require understanding, perception and action.  Unless you seek God’s counsel and obey His direction, you will not act with wisdom.  You will act foolishly no matter how wonderful the decisions appear in Alice’s world.  Start with “who”, not with “what”.