What We Won’t Search For

“ ‘Little did he know’?  I’ve written papers on ‘little did he know’.  I used to teach a class based on, ‘little did he know’.  I mean, I once gave an entire seminar on ‘little did he know’.   'Little did he know' means there is something he doesn’t know”.  ‘Little did he know’ means that there is something you don’t know--do you know that?” 

(Stranger than Fiction)

The other night I locked my keys in my car. I had the terrible foreboding that I had done just that as I pressed the lock button on the outside of the door.  But still, I frantically searched my purse and my pockets for something that I knew was beyond my grasp.  Sometimes, the thing that you most need is out of your reach.  It is locked away.  It requires a lot more effort to lay hold of.  It requires searching. 

It’s interesting to me that when the Bible talks about wisdom it is often personified. It isn’t likened to the state of being smart.  It talks about befriending wisdom; calling her your sister. Wisdom is the voice that cries out on street corners while the world goes by unaware progressing toward destruction. Wisdom has to be sought, like the thoughts of a friend have to be asked rather than guessed.  Wisdom has to be searched for, not selected from a multiple choice list.  It is a hidden thing.  It takes effort to find it, because if you’ve ever lost something, you know that finding isn’t so much an intellectual exercise as a perseverance game. It is a treasure hunt with a paucity of oblique clues.  It is turning your world inside out until you find what you are looking for. But we want our answers faster these days, and we want popular answers most of all.

Culturally speaking, I’m not sure that we’re much willing to search out wisdom anymore. I think mostly we are happy to take on the set of opinions that endear us to the kind of people who appeal to us and then move on without following the thinking to their inevitable conclusions.  We don’t really want to think about things too deeply.  We don’t want to be disliked.  We don’t want to walk hard pathways because usually we find out we’re going to walk down them alone while a noisy crowd heaps mockery from the sidelines.

Wisdom is an intangible treasure, but its outcomes are not. The absence of wisdom should be felt keenly--but like that old friend or family member that you never see--eventually you get used to it. Eventually, you forget to miss them. This is more dangerous than anything: losing wisdom and forgetting to miss her.  This is the ‘little did he know’ that will be our undoing.

We live in sensationalized times with a megaphone media and a collective soundbite attention span. We need to be willing to search out wisdom no matter how long or uncomfortable the task.  We need discernment.  We need the Spirit of Wisdom--which is the Holy Spirit-- to show us what to do and believe.

“But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears and he will tell you what is yet to come.” (John 16:13)

Wisdom is the ability to perceive the truth and judge accordingly; and as Christians we have access to it. But we have to ask.  We have to seek. We have to knock.  

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” (James 1:5)  

We have to believe expectantly that God is going to answer and provide the discernment and wisdom that we are looking for in every situation.   We need to be looking for it.  We need to be watching.