Does true wisdom even exist?

Leviticus 24; Psalm 31; Ecclesiastes 7; 2 Timothy 3

This pandemic and personal isolation is having a wide range of effects on people. Some are enjoying it as a ‘staycation’ while others are ‘losing their minds’ in extreme impatience for ‘normal’ life to return. For them, not being able to do whatever they want to do is an extreme hardship. Some even say this is like being in jail. At least one person said it was like being in a concentration camp.

I’m not sure what others are experiencing. For me, this is more like God pushed a reset button and sent me back into another era where people were not so busy and had time to play with their children, read books, and relax with a jigsaw puzzle. I know some are terribly anxious about running out of money (and toilet paper) and others are missing human contact and hugs to the point of being deeply agitated. Certainly our reactions expose our value systems!

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon recommends that people reflect on brevity of life and its meaning. He said a house of mourning should be preferred to a house of feasting meaning that sober reflection should be preferred to levity and that sorrow is better than laughter. His point is that sober reflection can lead to moral improvement and a changed life.

His words are similar to what Moses wrote: “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12) Our society has long valued a self-centered hedonism and this ‘reset button’ puts me into a place where I can more easily consider what are the most important things in life. Solomon’s advice is sharp:

Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools. Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. (Ecclesiastes 7:8–10)

These days, just as in Solomon’s days, the temptation is to become impatient, angry, complaining and longing for the ‘good old days’ or at least ‘normal’ whatever that might mean. Some may even be proud that they are handling this isolation rather well, yet both extremes are contrary to Solomon’s reasoning. He says:

Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked? (Ecclesiastes 7:13)

Considering what is happening, and in light of my strong belief in God’s sovereignty, I tend to welcome the reset button. God is calling me, and maybe the entire human race, to think more deeply about life, why I am here and about His control of things over my human efforts to control things.

My commentary says that even though people might find fault with what God has done, no one can change what He thinks is wrong or unfair. No one can straighten what He says is crooked. Besides that, He combines adversity and prosperity so we cannot discern the future. Far better to submit to and trust His sovereignty. That is, enjoy the good times and remember in the bad times that God has inscrutable purposes beyond finite human understanding. As Solomon said, no one is wise enough to understand God’s scheme of things. His purposes are “far off and deep, very deep” yet the struggles we have are not because God is doing what He does. That responsibility is our own:

See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. (Ecclesiastes 7:29)

In trying to have life the way I want it, my scheming results in ‘going off the rails’ into a perversion of the life that God intended for me. He pressed that reset button for good reason.

APPLY: I’ve begun to ask myself each day about the stuff on my to-do list. Does it matter? Will it last? Has it any eternal value? Will it help others? Will it glorify the Lord? This is not an excuse to fail to clean the bathroom or keep my home in order but taking to heart the wisdom God gave Solomon and Moses. I’ve supposed that no one wants to waste their life but now am not sure that is true. It so easily happens, even to those of us who try so hard to not waste anything.

Even sorrow has meaning for life

My sister and dearest friend must move again because the place where she lives is not equipped to care for her. My empathy probably brought on last night’s dream in which I was preparing to move. I was going to a better climate but a smaller place and trying to decide what I wanted to take with me. When I woke up, all those dream decisions about what was important extended into my waking thoughts. I’ve been trying to pare down anyway, but this dream made my ‘stuff’ much less important.

Young people don’t think about such things. Most of their life is ahead of them, not behind. They have few thoughts of paring down as most are busy accumulating. The dream threw me into solemn contemplation about life’s milestones, particularly the speed of time as we grow older, and I felt sad.

This dream also reminded me of Ecclesiastes with its gloomy and pessimistic tone yet this morning I can more easily relate to the attitudes of the man who wrote it and concluded that ‘all is vanity.’ I don’t want my life to be vain and without value.

Today’s devotional does not take me to Ecclesiastes but it does go to a place where one life seemed to be headed to a disastrous death, yet His life was not in vain:

“And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.’ And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, and he said to them, ‘Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.’” (Luke 22:41–46)

Jesus knew His death — and all it involved — was imminent. He would die for the sin of the world, my sin included. His death would be as ugly as death can be, but He would save millions from the wrath of God that would soon be poured out on Him. No vanity in His life, but it did involve pain and sorrow.

Jumping to Tozer, he writes that some Christians believe that Christ shields His followers from the painful parts of life. This is not true. Almost always, God’s people are effective only after suffering. Sometimes the wounds are humbling and bring contrition, compassion and a yearning to more deeply know God and His love. Sometimes painful days brought us into a deeper kinship with the suffering of Jesus Christ.

Compared to Christ, my suffering isn’t much, yet the Bible tells me to think differently about suffering. It is not a dreaded thing to avoid but often the way God shapes me to be like His Son:

“Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? ‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.’ It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” (Hebrews 12:3–7)

If I compare the sorrow I feel about life, about aging, about leaving this world, just turning to the daily news is a quick wake-up — God is going easy on me. Yet His goal remains the same for me and for those in greater sorrows that I will ever experience; He wants us to consider all our trials as means to maturity. I must quit whining and respond like Jesus. Even though He asked that His great trial be removed, He also said, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

^^^^^^^^^^^

Jesus, being wounded in life is the path to winning battles against sin. Even a small discipline is far more noble that having no ‘trials that teach.’ A life without pain or sorrow or struggling sounds good, but Your Word is clear; because I am your child and because sin has deeply affected all of me, then I can expect suffering or whatever it takes to conquer that sin and become more like You. Today, I’m thinking about the end of my life too, and know that I will spend eternity with You. The speed which it approaches should be a delight, not bring sorrow. Your gracious promises make it easier to say, “Not my will, but yours, be done.”

Let sorrow do its work . . .

When Jesus knelt in the garden prior to the awful sorrow of death, He prayed first a short question — should He ask to be delivered — yet quickly offered up His heart on the matter. Glorifying God was more important than anything else . . .

“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” (John 12:27–28)

Chambers says that his own attitude toward sorrow and difficulty is not to ask they may be prevented, but to ask that the person God created him to be would survive the horror of sorrows. He says that Jesus was not saved from the hour, but out of the hour. That is, He went into the worst that could happen, willing that God be glorified in it, and through that horror He survived. He rose from the dead and lives forevermore!

Most of us don’t want any suffering in this world, but today’s news headlines are filled with it. As I read a portion of the psalms before this, my heart felt like it would break over the descriptions of the sorrow in the life of the psalmist and how they match my own grief for the godlessness in my world.

The suffering is not only real but seems to increase day by day. I want to hide in my studio and not read or listen to the news, but that is not how Jesus would respond. Sorrow is a fact of life and it must be met with the same thoughts expressed by the Savior in Gethsemane.

For Jesus, it led to triumph over death. For us, sorrow can give us triumph over self-centered sin. Along with Chambers, I say it can do that, if met with the attitude of Jesus Christ. Otherwise, it will turn us into whining, bitter people who have little compassion for others and a great deal of resentment toward God.

The wisest man, Solomon, said, “Sorrow is better than laughter, for by a sad countenance the heart is made better.” (Ecclesiastes 7:3) He knew the changes that happened in his own life because of sorrow.

Suffering can whack away the parts of me that do not look like Jesus, but it can also inflate the ugliness in me and make my sinful self the only thing other people see or experience. Success does not make me more holy, nor does mediocrity. As Chambers says, those who avoid sorrow become heady and proud, or continually complaining about something. I can be more like Jesus when sorrow routs out my sinful and selfish attitudes and makes of me a person who not only empathizes with the pain of others, but is available to listen and give aid.

Maybe that is one undercurrent reason that I resist the positives that come with the experience of trouble. I know in my heart that it will change me into a compassionate, caring person who has more time for others, and what I selfishly want is more time for me.