Wisdom's Call: 100 Meditations for a Life in Christ

WHO IS WISE?

Perhaps the most famous of the wisdom books in the Bible is Proverbs. It tells us at its outset why it exists:

For learning wisdom and discipline;

for understanding insightful sayings;

for receiving prudent instruction

in righteousness, justice, and integrity;

for teaching shrewdness to the inexperienced,

knowledge and discretion to a young man—

let a wise person listen and increase learning,

and let a discerning person obtain guidance—

for understanding a proverb or a parable,

the words of the wise, and their riddles. (Prov. 1:2–7)

Life is confusing and at times, profoundly disappointing. If God hadn’t provided His Word and the Holy Spirit to guide us into all wisdom and joy, we would most certainly be people of absolute despair, with the pain of the world obscuring its joys and triumphs.

Once we gather some years and a bit of grey hair at the temple, we realize that some of life’s difficulties were the result of suffering the consequence of our own choices. At times those choices were made from ignorance, at other times selfishly motivated, and still at other times completely against the counsel of those who already knew the briar-covered path and had the scars to prove it.

Yet there are some who have come through this pilgrim’s journey as if it were a nomadic adventure—hard-won wisdom that produces joy in knowing what is the right thing in the worst situations. Imagine a nomadic people group who have always lived off the land. Their children are told as they walk along where the hazards are. In the savanna, death lurks in the tall grass where the lions hide; in the tundra, the danger lies in crossing the thin ice. In each case, those who are journeying pass on vital, life-saving information.

We call these people wise.

Some who have not traveled the path reject their wisdom and grow more foolish with each passing year, only wishing to satisfy themselves. The old people used to say there’s no fool like an old fool, battle-scarred and never learning. Old on the outside, but children within. We all know people who’ve grown old yet never learned that the low grass provides clearer vision, that a whole community can cross on thicker ice. Moreover, the foolish do not only hurt themselves, since we never sin in a vacuum; our foolish choices always affect others because we are a connected, communal people made to either bless or curse after the fashion of our triune, promise-keeping Creator.

These people, we call fools.

It’s at the humble threshold of wisdom and life that we leave folly behind, where we move from haphazard to disciplined and from ignorant to understanding, able to receive from those who are elder-wise, trading shrewdness for inexperience, and pursue righteous, just, and holy living that respects our own dignity and the dignity of others.

And be prepared for the words of the wise in riddles: they are vexing and fun, much better lived than told.

A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME

What transforms a house into a home? Any structure can be a house, but it’s the elements within—especially the people—and what qualities they bring that make it a home. I’ve noticed that even the most beautifully appointed home can feel terribly hollow if the occupants I love are not there. Of course, in a busy home I enjoy the stillness and the quiet, but also because of the lingering memories of the occupants who have filled the rooms and my heart with their peace.

Some of our spiritual ancestors sang from the depths of their souls, toil, and harsh labor: I’ve got a home in glory land that outshines the sun.¹ They sang of the Home that Christ Himself has prepared—for the construction is already done, and the keys secured the moment He emerged from the grave to lead us captives to the door. He tells us that His Home has many rooms, space for all He has gathered in. In His Home, there is pleasant work. The fragrances of perfect peace and purpose rise from every corner to bless our glorified senses. The fragrance of life reigns because He is there—the chief architect of the structure that was set stone upon stone, filling it with the safety and fulfillment of His people in mind.

Look around. The architect has set glimpses of this glorious Home all around for us to discover, for our delight. The psalmist saw these homes of peace and order all around him, parting tree limbs and peering into the homes of God’s tiniest creatures nestled between branches. God fashions homes for even the sparrow and the swallow, a nest for herself where she places her young … near your altars (Ps. 84:3). So safe are these little ones that they trust their young—that is, their future and their hope—to Him.

How content are the psalmist’s swallow and sparrow, more secure than in the palm of any human hand. Safe. Nestled. Protected and watched over by the Creator Himself, who reminds us today that we have a home in glory land that outshines the sun.

And as the psalmist meditates on his promised place of shalom, like Adam he names it aptly … he calls it lovely.

So it is with Wisdom’s house.

How lovely is your dwelling place,

LORD of Armies.

I long and yearn

for the courts of the LORD;

my heart and flesh cry out for the living God.

Even a sparrow finds a home,

and a swallow, a nest for herself

where she places her young—

near your altars, LORD of Armies

my King and my God.

How happy are those who reside in your house,

who praise you continually. (Ps. 84:1–4)

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1. I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land, https://hymnary.org/text/ive_got_a_home_in_glory_land.

THE WORLD RUNS ON WISDOM

The LORD founded the earth by wisdom

and established the heavens by understanding.

By his knowledge the watery depths broke open,

and the clouds dripped with dew.

PROVERBS 3:19–20

The psalmist marvels aloud at creation around him: Christ has created everything seen and unseen. We live in an ordered, intricately interdependent yet harmonious universe.

Even though our age is one of cynicism, even pessimism, every one of us still feels our breath catch at the sight of a shooting star, or when the curtain of the northern lights descends and dances, or as we survey the wonder of tiny nails, eyebrows, and toes of a fresh, newborn babe.

The foundation of this ordered world stands so firm with the imprint of its Creator’s wisdom that even though the destructive folly of Satan would mar its beauty and introduce decay, the principles of physics still define and drive it.

We see numerous affirmations scattered throughout Scripture that Christ is the wisdom on which our world rests. These assurances exist as our treasure, like iridescent pearls scattered across the page. The letter to the Colossians declares that Christ is the Creator of all things in the universe (Col. 1:16), and the Corinthian epistle likewise draws on Solomon’s treasury with this truth: Christ Himself is our wisdom, and our way of understanding the world (1 Cor. 1:16–31).

Even though it is a fallen beauty, it is a majestic beauty still, with human beings as creation’s pinnacle: a marvel of divine engineering, living, sentient machines that run independently and are capable of worship, living beings with souls, each possessing a curious battery called a heart that runs without a plug, and cease at the Creator’s determining.

We run alive, with the breath of our Creator in our lungs.

And yet there are terrible things marring the beauty of all that is made—people, flora, fauna alike. Nothing has escaped the effects of the fall.

Scripture tells us that if we get wisdom, understanding follows. Apart from Christ, our wisdom—what we are able to know and do, anything that builds life—is an act of His grace. Proverbs tells us more about wisdom. The book tells us that the Lord, who is Wisdom Himself, used the innate qualities of wisdom to lay the earth’s foundation. In truth, the Creator is why the world, for all its brokenness and destruction, still makes sense and hangs together as a whole, since wisdom was the foundation of the cosmos design. Seasons still color our landscapes; spring still predictably follows winter in the places where it should.

Day follows night, and the sun hangs in the sky and marks our time. Animals, fish, and fowl remain fed and true to their nature. Kingdoms still rise and fall, and here is humanity in the middle of it all, despite the fallen nature of the world as we know it … His world crafted by wisdom, founded on wisdom, still sings.

CHRIST IS OUR WISDOM

Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God…. It is from [God] that you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us—our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

1 CORINTHIANS 1:24, 30

Paul teaches in his letter to Corinth that the uncreated Christ Himself is our wisdom.

Yes, Wisdom is a person—the person of Christ, the Creator of all things. His wise fingerprints are upon us, His breath of life is inside us, and His image covers us inside and out. Wisdom’s imprint on us is a part of God’s garden package. By dwelling with wisdom in the person of Christ, by whom, in whom, and through whom all things were made, our first parents relied on Him to explain their world. Having unhindered communion with the triune God in some form while they lived in the garden, they were to pattern themselves after His image by understanding the world through His eyes.

While the Bible speaks of Wisdom as a person, it also speaks of wisdom as a benefit to life, created by Christ at the foundation of the world. Proverbs 8 tells us that the Lord brought wisdom forth as the first of His works, before His deeds of old, appointed before eternity, before the world began (see vv. 22–23). Before the Let us makes of Genesis 1, even before the Let there bes, Wisdom was.

Let’s continue to think of Wisdom both as a person (Christ), and as an asset created by that person … a byproduct of the source of all wisdom, if you will.

Wisdom and truth are part of the testament to the richness of that image of God bestowed on humankind that separates us from the animals. (I hesitate to say it’s the whole, because no library could exhaust the contents of the image of God.) But we cannot deny that wisdom the life-force was imparted to man by Wisdom the person, when Christ breathed life into mankind and he became a living, breathing soul contained in a body.

Imagine that first intaking of breath … the first breath of life, how thrilling it must have been for Creator and creature, the tender exchange of life-giving, life-making air, billowing into the lungs from Life Himself.

We sing then with wisdom and amazement of the psalmist:

When I observe your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you set in place,

what is a human being that you remember him,

a son of man that you look after him?

You made him little less than God

and crowned him with glory and honor.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands;

you put everything under his feet.

(Ps. 8:3–7)

WISDOM’S STAMP

The exact substance of wisdom is difficult to grasp hold of, because that substance is God Himself. Yet we can understand wisdom’s substance by its expressions and also by its effects, which God has given us as visual aids.

One tangible expression of wisdom is the ordered universe in which we live. Though we know it now as a fallen world with brokenness shot through it, it remains beautiful and ordered and held together by His will and power. Matthew Henry, still highly regarded after three centuries for his biblical commentary, taught us that divine revelation is the word and wisdom of God, that the Redeemer is the eternal Word, and wisdom the Logos. So wisdom contains the power, understanding, and knowledge of the Trinity.

Then God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.

So God created man

in his own image;

he created him in the image of God;

he created them male and female.

(Gen. 1:26–27)

Adam first out of the dust, and Eve next out of his side. Ironically, among all the non-human creatures from which God made many couples, man is the only one where He fashioned two out of one. The man and the woman seem to be a physical extension of the relational intimacy of the Trinity’s creative force. By the handiwork of the interconnected yet distinct Three come an interconnected but distinct One.

Wisdom’s imprint on the first people is also a trinity of sorts: (1) in knowledge, their ability to see divine things clearly and truly, and there were no errors or mistakes in their knowledge; (2) in righteousness, in that the first couple’s will complied readily and universally with the will of God without reluctance or resistance; and (3) in true holiness (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10; Eccl. 7:29).

This imprint of wisdom defines the byproduct we call shalom. The first people of God enjoyed complex, interwoven relationships and affection among all the involved parties. They knew harmony with the rest of creation, as well as trust, communion, identity, security, and a lack of want.

This shalom was marked by three distinct blessings: presence, where God dwelt with man; property in a newly fashioned heaven and earth; and peace, as they lived in harmony with each other and the world around them. The garden, under Christ-directed shalom, was created to be a sanctuary and protected place.

Wisdom is then, at the very least, a window into the image of God. It is a part of the very good of garden life, a part of the situation that was most conducive to human flourishing. Throughout Proverbs and the rest of Scripture, Christ’s breath of life, of wisdom, of presence-dwelling and shalom, continues to be a life-giving force wherever it is found.

This picture gives us a scriptural definition for flourishing: the shalom of dwelling with the Creator, with no hindrances or obstacles to understanding His world, His intentions, and His purposes through His eyes. Shalom—or flourishing—is dwelling with Wisdom Himself, and it is directly tied to obedience to the source of wisdom. Shalom was never intended as a goal to be obtained; it’s not something humans can strive for or can even create. Though we create in God’s image by His mercy, our Creator stands as the only One who can wisely shape a world perfectly suited to our hopes, needs, and even our godly desires.

THIS NEW THING CALLED FEAR

Satan, the author of folly and destruction, ruined himself by attempting to be like the Most High: How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High’ (Isa. 14:12–14 ESV). This was ambition at its loftiest and its most foolish, to attempt an act that could never be attained.

The one who could not bear to dwell with the Prince of Peace cozied up to the woman and persuaded her that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which had been forbidden by God, "was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, [so] she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate" (Gen. 3:6 ESV).

He called her to Folly’s side, and how ironic that wisdom is included in the deception! The first people were already wise, since they walked and dwelt with Wisdom Himself. Wisdom was the first and natural orientation of our parents in the garden. But they chose instead to dwell with foolishness, and we as their children dwell with foolishness. Wisdom and Truth are two sides of the same coin, while Foolishness and Lies are also two sides of the same coin.

The result of the abandonment of wisdom, obedience, and shalom is reported in Romans 1:

For