Day 4087 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 9:10 NIV

What is wisdom?

Is it some destination defined by facts we’ve deduced thanks to the lessons which arrived us at the decisions that’ve often become the destination? Is it rather the journey we take through those lessons that perhaps we’ve not yet learned which asks that we never so endeavor to so determine that we’ve ever arrived at our destination? Is it what we know, facts and figures always found in our trying to figure it out? Is it found and felt in finding we can’t? Is it something we can even find at all? Is it something better felt and that only by faith as we insist it held always in that place that we’re not so that we’ve always something for which to strive while we’re alive inside this life?

Is it knowledge?

Is it understanding?

Among the greatest of all life’s tragedies is found this reality that seems to show that many here seem to know what wisdom is, and that it’s always somehow right where they are living as who they are defined by what they do. Is that true? Is wisdom the sum of what we do as is done based upon the knowledge, the understanding we’ve won through what we’ve been through, where all we’ve gone to, who all we’ve had to lose in order to get to those places in which we changed faces into whoever it is that we are today wherever today finds us?

Is wisdom meant to find us or are we supposed to seek it?

Scary isn’t it? All the things we don’t know as are probably only learned on the other side of questions we don’t ask? The life we’ve not lived because of the answers we’ve not had? The person we’ve all this time failed to be, failed to find because we were busy living that life that is now gone unto the past in which we’ve passed upon so many opportunities to have lived our lives differently? The destinations we’ve never been because they were only to be reached by decisions we didn’t make for paths we didn’t travel because they didn’t seem right to the many plans we’ve lived to make instead?

Indeed, is wisdom something won within all this planning we’re always doing? Can you plan a life in which you’re guaranteed to never be found losing anything, even your mind?

Or might losing our mind be the jumping off point which points us toward where wisdom awaits as whatever wisdom is?

What’s always been somewhat difficult for me is this verse we see here. For it seems to spell it out pretty plain. The fear of the Lord is where wisdom begins. And too that knowledge of the Holy One is what wins understanding. And yet we’ve long been a people who avoid those things which made us afraid because we’ve settled for this version of knowledge in which understanding is always so simple as just our ability to prove of the capability to show off our impressively vast capacity of facts and figures and even figurines found thanks to our fickle and fiscal approach to nearly everything.

Indeed, we’ve long understood something such as knowledge to even have a price tag that we’re meant to somehow afford or at least wish we could. Growing up it was impressed upon everyone that if anyone wanted to be successful then getting through high school wasn’t enough. In hindsight that kind of makes you wonder as to what they think of the schooling system that they’ve created with what was supposedly the aim of making us all into productive and capable members of society.

Seems they might not believe as highly in their systems as they’ve always asked us to.

Anyway.

Back in the early 2000’s, around the time that I was graduating high school, this whole college thing became something of a foregone conclusion. I mean I genuinely don’t remember anyone at all talking about plans they had for jobs they wanted to start working or what branch of the military they were joining or where it was that they hoped to be going to start a career for which they’d been studying. No, it was all about where we were all going to college and what degrees or doctorates or other such academic masteries we were seeking to assume unto ourselves.

Because that was what was expected of us.

I think often of the many other expectations this place placed upon us, wondering these days mostly only why it is that so many think it so wise as it isn’t to listen to a world in which most folks think wisdom is won within a piece of paper bought at the price of a house.

Seems this world then has even told us being at home here isn’t something we should seek to find, proven in that not many can afford it anymore.

And that even with college degrees!

Wonder what other foolishness He sees when He looks at us walking around so lost within our worldly wisdoms? For that’s another truth we’re told within His Word. It’s that the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. And why is that? Because it’s pretty stinking obvious that this world has all but entirely lost its fear of Him. We traded it away for our being always afraid of being poor, being lonely, being lost, left behind, trampled on as we stood in line right where we were told to stand so as to ensure our spot in the successes of a world so filled with stresses that none of us sleep anymore.

Too busy chasing down wisdom I suppose.

Unfortunately it seems still that we still think wisdom is mostly about, well, what we think.

Is it?

I used to think it was. That wisdom was something won under the sun. Granted, that was in my life lived not under the Son, so there’s that. But where’s me? Am I where, who, what I’m supposed to be? Have I arrived at the finality of my life and all that it could ever be? Is it wise to think that we should find inside our lives such outcomes as wisdom, knowledge, understanding that the two are indeed similar but that both their inputs and outcomes are decidedly different?

For if knowing of the Holy One is understanding, because it puts everything here into a perfect perspective that shifts our perception of this world into a place we can’t wait to leave behind as opposed to the place in which we’re supposed to find everything that causes a pause upon said hope, then this is something we can all at least somehow achieve, accomplish, complete.

Is wisdom the same?

Because growing in a knowledge of the Holy One is something that can be done through such manners and measures as reading the Word He’s written to help us cease being victims of the foolishness of this world, a world which continues to pass it off as wisdom. We can learn more about Him, learn more from Him in fact.

Does that always mean we fear Him more necessarily?

Sadly I know of many who’ve opted for this process called “deconstruction” in regard to a faith they once had that unfortunately seems to have turned out to be only a religion that resided in rules they did their best to follow but only to the eventual place in which the rules themselves proved rather hollow and that left them there without any hope left in what they had tried so hard to hold, either in their hands or simply together.

After all, to deconstruct demands at first something have been constructed, which is to be built, into what it becomes that is then only deemed worthy of such demolition.

Can wisdom be demolished so easily as our determining one day that it’s not worth wanting or waiting for anymore?

This is how we treat the fear of God.

And that mostly because we immediately assume that anything that even mentions fear must simply be a bad thing because, well, none of like being afraid.

But what if fear is wise?

For is not fear but only a reverent respect for something. Take spiders for example, or maybe snakes. These are both things of which people are afraid, and seemingly wisely so as, well, one bad encounter with either can lead to all sorts of truly unenjoyable things that themselves may prove entirely unbecoming of a life which obviously seeks to go on living.

In other words they can kill you and so, yeah, it’s widely agreed upon to be fairly wise to avoid them.

But, well, God can kill us too.

Does this mean we should avoid Him?

Well, truth is that it comes down to the degree of reverence we give and why. This is, again, all that fear really is. It’s a respect given unto something that deserves from us that decision to let our understanding of what it is, what is does, what all it can do to us to define in us a willingness to do whatever we can to remain on the safe side of what are things that can go bad.

Now that’s starting to sound like at least maybe part of what wisdom is.

For again, as those alive it’s considered far and wide to be fairly wise to seek to retain said status quo. This is why we’re all afraid to die. It’s because we’ve come to respect, to revere, to appreciate our opportunity to investigate all that this life is. We all find such things as enjoyment and excitement and sometimes even the odd happiness within this life. And since those things all feel good, sometimes even feel right, they seem like plausibly wise things for our to continue seeking.

Can the same not be said of God?

Can we not find excitement in our ability to enjoy the opportunities that He gives us to enjoy? Can we not feel good about doing the things He calls us to do, embracing humility as something of a here-felt down payment upon whatever it is that the fullness of hope is? Can’t we feel that relief in having said, done something that felt like it was the right thing to say or do?

Can we say it’s a bad thing to welcome fear into our rolodex of emotions, of expectations, of excitements even?

Most of the time we don’t as, again, fear has been sold to us as a bad thing that only makes life unfun, unenjoyable. And sure, fear has a pretty impressive ability to stifle the shuffle through a life in which we’d all prefer to dance as if we hadn’t a single care left in the world.

Maybe we should as, well, perhaps that’s exactly what wisdom is meant to do.

To relieve us of every care we’ve ever given to anything here. To remove from us that longstanding willingness to basically just blindly trust in the systems made by men for kids seeking to ensure said kids become the kind of men, the sort of women who, having been brought up (started out) upon that path paved of our doing as we’re told, even when we get old they’ll need not worry about our going wayward.

No, rather we’ll have been programmed to measure everything we say, do, think, want, win, are according to what this world tells us it, we should be.

Such as something so worthless as my college degree.

As I sit here today I can’t honestly say I even know where it is because I know what it is and that is one of the top five mistakes I’ve ever made in my life. And that’s because I’ve since learned that it’s not worth the paper upon which it was printed, much less then all the paper they’re still asking me to give them thanks to their having given me some pointless degree that taught me only what to think as opposed to how think.

Which is where it seems that the wisdom from above separated itself most clearly from whatever is this version so many still settle for down here.

For I believe that wisdom is a matter measured in what we think, in that we think. Indeed, I think that wisdom is a journey through thoughts, through theories, through trials which become testimonies not of our abilities or accomplishments or accolades but rather of the weather we managed to survive simply because we were on God’s side for once.

Notice that I didn’t say that we survived because God was on our side.

And that’s because, well for one, our side sucks as it’s one endlessly defined by our own various stupidities, and, secondly, because God doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.

Which we all have been seeing as how all have sinned and fallen then well short of the glory of God in what have then been lives in which they sought not to glorify God but rather to gain something which brought the glory unto themselves. And by themselves I mean ourselves because, again, all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God which, according to wisdom, is the fear thereof.

Yes, to live a life seeking give the glory, the honor, the praise, the appreciation and applause all to God, such is wisdom.

And that’s because, well, wisdom is a journey. And, yes, technically a journey at least somewhat made up of what we know, but strangely one which always proves that we’re usually wrong and that because, no matter what we know, we usually use it wrong. Which is, to me, the baser understanding of what wisdom is. It’s not what we know but rather how well we use it, and that along with the fact that, no, we don’t know everything and that, should humility be doing the work He intends for it to do, we actually never want to even come near that place in which we do.

Because to become all-knowing would arrive us upon a similar standing to God.

And as amazing as some of us may think ourselves to be, if we still think that we can at some point rival Him, we’re but dead men walking. And that because our version of wisdom will only keep us talking, thinking like the world from which we’ve learned it. A world which is promised to soon fall victim to the all the foolishness herein, all of it marked by a blatant disregard for God as is shown in, well, just about everything we see and most of what we hear.

Because this world seems to think it wise to once again resort to our playing God in what is this newfound fascination with artificial destinations even sought in terms of intelligence.

Still replacing the real thing with something that’s vastly more conducive to coddling our many obvious imperfections, and most of those there still simply because most here don’t care to do anything at all about them. Rather most here seem entirely content to continue onward in their current confusions until they eventually just die and are buried with them.

And, well, that doesn’t really seem like a wise thing to do.

Why?

Because this isn’t the end of the line. Rather the foot of Heaven’s throne is, or, well, for most just the gates through which said throne awaits. And that’s because we’ve been told within His Word that narrow is the road which leads through those gates and that it’s only found by few, and that those few are those who don’t do whatever it is that this world tells them is the wise thing to do, to try, to want, to find. No, those few rather lay down that life spent trying to find wisdom, hope, love, mercy, joy, healing in what’s obviously a world vastly more prone to prove the problem than fix it.

All because we’ve settled for seeing wisdom as something we can find rather than a growth we’re meant to always seek. Because most here have come to believe that we need to see something first before we’ll believe it. Because most here haven’t seen God, or so they’ve convinced themselves despite how birds fly better and faster and longer than even our most advanced jets can and how the fields are painted in colors of reality’s beauty that no brush can match and how the wind manages to dance through the tall grass even though it’s being blown by a vicious storm rolling it along toward the unknowns of wherever it goes.

A care it doesn’t have to have because it is simply what God intended for it to be.

Friends, how can we not see that such is what wisdom is?

That it’s truly nothing more than our being whatever God created us to be, and, just as importantly, being or becoming so content with that, so happy with that, so hopeful in that that we finally stop listening to this lost world telling all about all of this supposedly “better” stuff it’s found.

Wisdom doesn’t care what this world finds, feels, fights about or thinks it has figured out.

Because wisdom isn’t afraid of the world nor either then succeeding in or otherwise disappointing the same.

No, wisdom is here to please God, something only done when we both fear Him but finally know the Holy One enough to realize that fearing Him doesn’t have anything to do with cowering in our little corner that we’ve carved out in a world falling apart. Rather it’s about respecting Him so very much that we grow to appreciate Him for all that He’s done, all that He’s doing, all that He’s promised to do. An appreciation which ignites in us a desire to do only what He calls us to.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Mainly nothing else.

No, wisdom is wanting to follow the path that both Christ and that cross has lain out before us, scorning whatever sort of shame this twisted world may insist upon us for our doing of something that most here will sadly never know anything of. And that because most here still think they’ve something to gain here. Because most here still think that because we’re alive here that life is here. And sure it is because, yeah, we are.

But if we think that it’s wise to agree to such limitations insisted upon this life as to imagine it being lived in only this place and that for, at best, 70-80 years, then we’re idiots.

And idiots aren’t wise because they oftentimes don’t realize how foolish they are.

And that probably because they still believe wisdom something they can find by doing as the world tells them to do, simply because they’ve been handed a map they can see inside the ideals and idols we’ve managed to create out of everything that’s perishing.

And that may work well here as it’s clear that many here have found much success in their doing of what’s normal, common, popular, expected.

But as for me, I contend it far wiser to seek not our wealth, health, happiness in the place in which all things end but rather to always seek them in that place we can’t see because, as we can’t see it yet, this too means that we’ve not found it yet and that proves that we’ve not yet had a chance to so ruin it as this place we can see and have been.

No, wisdom is to be found only by those who stop trying to find it, understand it, prove they have it and rather simply pick up both their cross and their feet and trust that He will in fact lead toward wherever it is that both He and wisdom are waiting for us.

For when we get there we’ll finally learn that we had nothing of which to be scared but rather everything for which to hope.

But that only if we follow the narrow road which spends this life not seeking to prove wisdom won within this life but rather that it’s only wise to lay down this life in the brazen belief that He may somehow be pleased in our letting of all we have or think we know in exchange for the chance to change and become for once who He created us to be.

And that’s a people ever ready to leave.

And wise enough to not waste time packing bags because we believe that wherever we’re going will prove to have everything we need.

And thus that we need nothing of this place anymore.

And so we seek nothing here anymore either.

Why would we?

After all, is it wiser to want what you’ll leave behind or to let it all go hoping that doing so, knowing that doing so will help you finally start to see the blurred outline of all that isn’t here where we thus aren’t?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold