This Solomon guy in the bible is simply wrecking me and messing up my plans to gain wisdom. I set out on this journey 4 weeks ago to have a gathering where we study God’s word, discuss it, go home and study some more and come back and chat about it. The Lord dumped the word wisdom into my lap and off we were studying about wisdom.
My dad has always said “Your not tall enough for…” going to prom, moving to college, managing a business…etc. It’s just a little joke between us and he doesn’t really mean that I must grow some inches before I can do the thing, he is probably more referring to wisdom(and the fact that watching his baby girl grow up is hard to fathom). Perhaps what he was meaning to teach me was that, you are not yet wise enough to …
The problem is wisdom doesn’t add inches. And wisdom isn’t just about getting wise or smart or more sure. Wisdom is one big can of worms that will keep our little group of women busy digging up for at least the next year, if not two!
Feel free to read back a post or two to get caught up but basically, we’ve learned that God is the giver of wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is the Fear of the Lord. The Fear of the Lord is not being afraid of God but having a reverence and awe of God that leads you to deep devotion for him and in a sense becoming afraid to do anything that would grieve him. Time with God, studying his word, increases our hatred to sin and thus increases our fear of the Lord and the Fear of the Lord is the fertile soil where wisdom begins to grow.
Got that?….
OK, so as I get to know the writings of this Solomon, this ‘wise man’, of the bible, he’ starting to mess things up for me. Wisdom no longer is about getting wiser and smarter and taller…apparently it has not eternal value and will cause much sorrow. Its true, check it out in Ecclesiastes. Just read the first chapter and you’ll be sitting with:
Because in much wisdom there is much grief and increasing knowledge results in increasing pay. Ecc 1:18
***don’t you just love autocorrect, and don’t you wish the word said increasing knowledge would result in increasing pay? well it doesn’t, it results in increasing PAIN> I couldn’t just correct this because I laughed and laughter is good for you.
The good news here is this conclusion stems from experimentation with purely worldly knowledge and learning which is what causes much grief and that increasing in worldly knowledge by itself (apart from divine knowledge and revelation) increases sorrow. This is because the very process of learning expands our awareness of our ignorance. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ makes more sense to me now.
It is God who has sewn into us the restless quest for meaning. Our search for wisdom should be that of God’s wisdom not the worlds. Our uncovering of things and the gaining of knowledge and wisdom can bring about discoveries of pleasing things but then there are 10 other things that we discover that will increase our sorrow.
…have patience to break through the sorrow of it…to find increase in heavenly wisdom brings joy and SECURITY.
As we left The Gathering we were charged with two action points.
(1) Continue to ponder the idea of wisdom that you had before we started studying it (getting smarter, wiser, knowledgeable) and the understanding that now growing in wisdom will cause some sorrow.
(2) Move into Proverbs 2 and chew on some stuff there a bit.
As for me, I’m gonna keep learning about Solomon, he is intriguing me….
**Meetings are Tuesday’s at 6:30….All are welcome!