Love of Wisdom

A meditation for August 2004

There’s been a lot of talk about a girl friend of ours. Sophia is her name! I say “ours” because she belongs to all of us in the community of faith. Deep within the Judeo-Christian tradition is a reverence for Wisdom, as she is better known. Along with the Law and the Prophets, our forebears in the faith preserved writings we have come to call the Books of Wisdom.

These writings are more than the wisdom of Solomon, although he gets credit for much of the collective insights and practical theology which God’s people accumulated. The ancient Hebrew people knew themselves as God’s own people, a people chosen and precious. They understood Yahweh, the Lord God Almighty, to be an eternal, all-knowing God, but a God whose wisdom was imparted to enrich and to govern the life of God’s people.

God’s wisdom was and is God’s gift to us. It is not a wisdom condensed in so many words and embalmed in manuscripts. In the Hebrew scriptures, Wisdom is personified, introduced to us as a woman, a companion, and a lover. We are called to love and to serve wisdom as God’s gift.

The Apostle’s witness is that Jesus Christ is the Wisdom of God. What is your testimony?

Love of Wisdom

Follow me to where the Spirit’s gifts are found and I will show you the way of wisdom.

If I speak with the wisdom of Solomon, or in the language of the saints, but do not communicate love with my words, I will enlighten no minds and warm no hearts. And even if I look at life with proverbial common sense, but look without love, I gain only nonsense.

And if wisdom’s words speak of the future and also probe the mystery of evil, and if they reveal knowledge about all things prudent; and even if my faith in such knowledge overcomes youthful folly and moves the hardened skeptic, but I voice wisdom without loving wisdom, I gain nothing.

Love, in wisdom’s pursuit, is patient and takes kindly to understanding. True wisdom is never full of herself, nor does she meddle in obtrusive ways. Love looks beyond intellectual answers to the whole truth.

Love, embracing wisdom, speaks in the whirlwind and in the still small voice. Love’s wisdom calls on humanity to glorify God and to enjoy God forever.

Love, when it takes wisdom’s part, bears suffering with the patience of Job; believes that its Redeemer lives; hopes for God’s grace when asking why-questions. Love endures, knowing that for everything there is a season.

Love of wisdom never ends.

As for fortune cookies, they will crumble; as for sophia’s detractors, they will stumble; as for inspired wisdom, in its presence we are humble. For we are in awe of God’s wisdom, but when we accept it as a gift, our incompleteness will be overcome.

When I had not yet gained wisdom, I spoke out of my limited knowledge; I thought philosophically, seeking to rationalize suffering; I reasoned logically, believing one could speak with wisdom without becoming wisdom’s lover. But when wisdom came to me in my maturity, I gave up my foolish ways.

For now we view wisdom as the sum of our human knowledge, but soon we will understand the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom. Then we will accept our human limitations and come face to face with the One who is the wisdom of God and whose wisdom fills our minds and overflows our hearts.

Now I long for wisdom’s company, but in God’s time I will find her at my side and I shall understand her ways, even as I am understood and am graced by her love song.

So faith in all knowledge acquired; hope in wisdom’s promised riches; and love for wisdom’s epiphany, these three abide, but the greatest is God’s gift of wisdom.

Listen for wisdom’s love song

(Permission is given to reproduce, with source acknowledged.)
From Love’s Letters: A Poetic Book of Confessions by George Gunn
(Library Lane Press / Copyright 2001)