Psalm 119:97-120; Baruch 3:24-37; James 5:13-18; Luke 12:22-31
What is wisdom and knowledge? That is the question the writer of this passage sets out to answer. There is no wisdom or knowledge that truly measures up unless it is eternal. If what we know concerns things that are not eternal and yet we know there are eternal things then we have failed to search for true wisdom and knowledge. Do we believe in anything that is eternal? That is a good beginning point to the search for wisdom. If we believe there is nothing eternal then all knowledge is transitory and essentially meaningless except for building a kingdom of our own that we know is temporary. If we believe there is something eternal, that existed before all that we know and experience and that will exist beyond their span of existence then we should pursue knowledge of that thing or person if we would know anything truly. Knowledge about creation begins with the acknowledgement of a creator and then knowledge about Him provides us with knowledge of His creation. We must, however, make a right beginning if we are to attain to wisdom.
Jesus asks us to consider a few things, think on them, see if we understand them: ravens, adding an hour to our lives, lilies. These things simply are what they are, they exist. We are called to both exist and grow in our knowledge of our own existence. Most of what we concern ourselves with on a daily basis are things that God can do without our worrying about them or being anxious about them and so we are freed to contemplate higher things like the One who provides all these things. Jesus says that we should give our lives and our thoughts to those things, seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness rather than these second order things or we have wasted the gifts we have been given. We have the gift of reason and awareness of God that these other things do not possess and yet we live at a level below these lower orders of creation because we focus our attention on things that even they don’t worry about. Can we learn to be and to seek Him, it isn’t natural but the Spirit frees us (or should) to do exactly that.
James tells us that we are to be a people devoted to prayer in all things. In any situation in life the appropriate response is, as the song says, take it to the Lord in prayer. He makes a bold statement in the midst of this passage, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” Who among us is “righteous”? Does God hear us differently when we are in right relationship to Him? Does sin act as a barrier to God’s hearing us? We do need to take sin seriously in our lives and make a habit of confessing our sin to Him. James encourages us to confess our sins to one another and as Protestants we rebel a bit against such an idea but as Dietrich Bonhoeffer counseled in his book, Life Together, the practice has great merit. When we confess to a brother or sister we begin to get a sense of sin as abominable. It begins to become real to us when we confess we truly don’t love the Lord with our whole heart and our neighbors as ourselves, when we confess the lust in our hearts, the feelings of anger and even hatred for others, all those things from Matthew 5-7 that Jesus spoke of that we dismiss when we confess to God. If we are to make progress in righteousness and in our prayer life, we must begin by dealing with sin and then we are seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Come, holy Comforter,
thy sacred witness bear
in this glad hour.
thou who almighty art,
now rule in every heart,
and ne'er from us depart,
Spirit of power!
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