Father God, I the secret of my heart teach me wisdom…

                                                                    
Wisdom 7:22 – 8:1

 
“Wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me. There is in her a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold…” So begins the definitive text about wisdom. It is clear that wisdom is essential for us to live life abundantly because it leads us away from ‘sin’ and into all that we are designed to receive from the hand of Father God.  Why is it, then, that I so often turn away from wisdom and become sidetracked by foolishness?  Our family dog showed me an answer to this conundrum.  When Shadow is off leash and free to roam the fields and forests on his own, he stays clear of trouble and exhibits many of the elements of wisdom:  he finds a unique path, he finds manifold scents, he can subtly stalk a gopher; he is very mobile and flexible; his relationship to the landscape is unpolluting; he seems to be invulnerable; he certainly loves the good; his keen senses are at work and etcetra.  But when I hook our dog onto his line, he becomes tangled in all kinds of things, he pollutes the back yard, and carves an unsightly path through the grass; he digs constantly out of frustration and has been known to bite a visitor who surprises him in his own territory. So it is with me.  When I am ‘off leash’ and redeemed from the sins I have committed by Christ, I am able to roam freely and use the wisdom that God has placed in my heart. As much as I freely turn to him in prayer and praise,I have time to sense the nudges of the Holy Spirit and to go where he sends me.  But as soon as I am ‘hooked up’ to a plan or a purpose that is opposed to wisdom, aka binding rather than freeing in the Spirit, my own spirit begins to exhibit stress lines that are counter to the Holy Spirit of Wisdom described by Solomon. Then I become polluting, unsure and anxious like a dog hooked to a line.tugging at the tensions and forgetting about the source of wisdom within.  Will I bind myself to worldly ‘lines of thought’, or will I remain ‘free in the Grace and wisdom of the Holy Spirit’? Father God, in the secret of my heart teach me wisdom.  
 
The unfolding of your words, O Lord, gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.   (Psalm 119)
 
 “Getting wisdom is the wisest thing you can do.”
Proverbs 4:7
 
Soli ad gloriam
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