Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Wisdom as per Proverbs

In Proverbs 8:30-31 Wisdom herself says:
"Then I was constantly at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind."

The Father and the Son delighted in the world they made and in us. We see beauty in things when they are rightly related to one another...the more we discern how the parts of a piece of music, or of a flower, all fit together, the more we delight in the music and the flower, not for what it can do for us but what it is in itself, as part of God's creation. Wisdom is essentially about discerning and forming the right relationships and rejoicing in them.

This snippet is from a devotional I'm reading, written by Tim and Kathy Keller, titled God's Wisdom for Navigating Life. I'm reminded how Scripture repeatedly points us to the beauty of Creation, and that it is a healthy thing for us to value it, not for what it can do for us (which is the common mindset), but just because it IS, because God created it. I find it sad that we have not discerned as The Church, the place of God's creation (nature, if you will) and formed the right relationship with creation in the last decades. Even our farmers back in the 40's and 50's understood it. A complete dependence on the land for a fullness of life. If you read anything by Wendell Berry, you'll get a fresh grasp of what many of us Americans understood back then, which is sorely missing in our society today.

This biblical knowledge, WISDOM, really, is why I keep working with TEAM to develop Creation Care Efforts with our missionaries, even though we remain underfunded and many people misunderstand what Creation Care really is. I hope and pray that you, as you read this, will begin to grasp this biblical reality we are called to, and do your part to learn more about it, and, as the Proverbs exhort us: "Above all else, gain wisdom."

No comments: