God of Wisdom

We often say that wisdom is earned by living, that the older you get and the more experiences you have the world, the more wise you'll be because you have navigated so many things, learned what works and what doesn't work, tried and failed and tried again. 

And maybe that's one way to think of it, but it's not God's way to think of it. 

To God, wisdom has always been there. It's woven into the very fabric of all creation from before creation even began. When there was just formless and void, God ensured that wisdom was right alongside Him as He spoke all things into being. Even as He knelt down into the dust to breathe life into the first man. 

So wisdom is not earned by living; it is encountered by living. At each broken turn, we run right up against it and, if we're paying the right kind of attention, take notice. 

Even Paul says this is the true nature of wisdom when he's writing to the Corinthian church. He says that they are preaching wisdom, but not the kind of wisdom that this world talks about - not the kind that comes from this age or from the experience of just living your life and learning some things along the way. No, Paul says, all the folks who are trying to live by that kind of wisdom are "coming to nothing." 

It's the kind of wisdom that God holds that holds the real key to life and love and faith (1 Corinthians 2:7). 

This kind of wisdom is imparted by the Spirit and nothing else. It is encountered in the wild because it is woven through every fiber of creation. It comes from running right up against it over and over and over again until you can finally see that it's not an obstacle and it's not a hindrance and it's not foolishness, but it's actually a better way. 

The kind of wisdom that exists in creation will demonstrate for you how to handle this world, if you'll let it. On your own, you will stumble and fall and fail again and again and you will try to recreate the wheel to figure out how to get through this life, but wisdom is already winding its way through this life and it will show you the path if only you follow it. 

We're just so stunningly terrible at following it. 

Then, we stumble upon it all over again and think that we have found something. That we have learned something. That we have finally figured it all out. When, in fact, it was already figured out from the very beginning...we just missed it. 

The truly wise among us know that they can take no credit for their own wisdom, even if they seem to have gained it over a hundred years of living. Because they understand that they never really gained anything; they only stumbled upon it over and over again until they finally figured out just to follow it through. It was then they discovered that what they thought was wisdom was, in fact, only leading them to "nothing." 

True wisdom, which was there all along, leads them to life.