Guest Blogger: Peet Dickinson

The Very Rev’d Peet Dickinson is the Dean at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke and St. Paul in Charleston, SC.

“WISDOM: THE PATH TO LIFE”

When Steve invited me to contribute something for his blog, it didn’t take me too long to know what I should write about.  It’s something that has been brought to the forefront of my heart and mind after being fairly well neglected on my list of daily prayer points over the last couple years.  I really can’t believe that it took me as long as it did to wise up, and I emphasize “wise up.”  What have I neglected?  I have neglected to pray for wisdom.  When the Lord appeared to King Solomon at Gibeon and said to him, “Ask what I shall give you.”  Solomon asked for one thing as he surveyed the awesome responsibilities he had before him as king, and that was wisdom.  We read that God was very pleased to grant Solomon this request.  I think it was probably because this was really a request to more closely resemble the character of God himself.

You see wisdom is a characteristic of God that is so vivid and active that in Holy Scripture it is described not simply as a trait, but as a personification.  Eckhard Schnabel, in his article on wisdom in the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, points out the comprehensive ways that wisdom personified focuses on God’s involvement with the world: “wisdom is involved with the divine creative activity (Job 28:24-27); wisdom is the firstborn of creation (Prov. 8:22-31); wisdom was present when God made the world (Prov. 8:27-30); God founded the earth by wisdom (Prov. 3:19; 8:30).”  Schnabel writes, “The figure of wisdom is the Lord himself, who cares for his creation and who summons human beings to observe the nearness, the acts, and the personal call of God.  Intimacy with wisdom is not distinguished from intimacy with God.  Divine wisdom is a communication of God showing the path to life.”

When we think about the wisdom of God being that which brought order out of chaos or something out of nothing in creation, it’s no wonder that it is that communication of God that will show us the path to life.  In the midst of circumstances that seem so beyond our capacity to deal, wisdom can come in and bring clarity and a way forward that isn’t arbitrary, but is squarely aligned with God’s perfect will.  Therefore, it is truly the “path to life.”  Who doesn’t need that?  And yet, I wasn’t seeking it.  I wasn’t asking the Lord for wisdom.

But, here’s what’s dawned on me in the last few days.  No amount of seeking on my part or pleading in my quiet time for wisdom was going to be the answer to my lack of it.  Here’s the good news.  Wisdom is not really something that we seek, but is in fact something or someone who seeks us.

When you read the first chapter of Proverbs, what you see is not a trait that we should aspire to cultivate, but it is a person scouring the streets and markets, crying out to us that we might hear her.  So, the prayer we should offer is not, Lord, may I attain wisdom, but rather, “Lord, may I hear and receive wisdom.”  And here’s some more good news.  God’s wisdom personified is not simply some ethereal and abstract poetic devise.  Ultimately, wisdom personified is Jesus.  Jesus is the wisdom of God who seeks us and cries out to us.  If Schnabel is right in his definition of wisdom as “the Lord himself, who cares for his creation and who summons human beings to observe the nearness, the acts, and the personal call of God,” doesn’t that resemble what we read in Matthew 11:2-4 and 25-27?  Then in 1 Corinthians 1:24ff, when Paul calls Jesus the “wisdom of God” isn’t Paul describing the only “path to life” there is?  The “wisdom of God” is a person.  The “wisdom of God” is Jesus.  The “wisdom of God” has come to us rather than us finding it.

So, even though I haven’t prayed specifically for wisdom, in the end, I really don’t have to.  I know Jesus and him crucified, and he’s all the wisdom I need.  That’s the path to life.