“For in
much wisdom is much vexation,
and those
who increase knowledge increase sorrow.”
~Ecclesiastes 1:18 (NRSV)
This, on the surface, may appear
to be a very depressing subject. We could be forgiven for believing that
growing in Wisdom is a futile search retrieving only sorrow.
Of course, the nurture of Wisdom
promises much more. But with maturity—another word for wisdom—comes the greater
appreciation of the range of common and uncommon experience known to human life. The
wiser we get, spiritually speaking, and the more access we have to both our
primal and sophisticated feelings, the more we will feel. And that is a dire
reality for the uninitiated.
The wise actually make a mission
for themselves. Had they known earlier on, perhaps they may not have ventured.
Wisdom, like the journey of faith, lures us and only when we have committed
does she begin to press in on us. Wisdom, like the journey of faith, appears
easy to begin with. Only later does it get hard. That is discipleship.
What we must take on, as this
committed journey continues, are the scrapings of moral courage. Only when
Wisdom transforms itself in courage can we enter in.
When Wisdom Is Courage To Enter In
“My joy is
gone, grief is upon me,
my heart
is sick.”
~Jeremiah 8:18 (NRSV)
The Prophet’s sentiment is humanly
common. He repents for his people, and perhaps knows more acutely than anyone
the national distress we know, historically, that was Judah’s to come.
Jeremiah is the image of depressed
wisdom from stark knowledge. More knowledge has not necessarily done him good
and attracted him favour, apart from in God’s eyes.
But Wisdom is truth. The longer
our journey on the path toward Wisdom, the more truth we will be confronted by.
Courage is a necessity of survival.
The Ambit Of Wisdom
The true conquest of Wisdom is
harrowing and, indeed, sorrowful. No one genuinely setting out on Wisdom’s path
does so, enduring the journey, with blinkers left on.
The ambit of Wisdom is the
divinity of humiliation; the equanimity of nothingness; the preparedness to be
stripped of all we bring, for God needs nothing that God does
not already have.
But just as the acclamation of
Wisdom is a sadistically unique conquest, it drives us headlong into life—life
as God designed us to live. Wisdom is a divine idea for the actualisation of
humanity. But such an actualisation will require more of us than we can yet
perceive.
***
Wisdom is a double-edged sword. It
brings us life, but also sorrow. Yet, it’s God will that we work on our
learning and grow in Wisdom, abiding in the truth.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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