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The intent of Pilgrim Processing is to provide commentary on the Daily Lectionary from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The format for the comment is Old Testament Lesson first, Gospel, and Epistle with a portion of one of the Psalms for the day as a prayer at the end.

Saturday, December 27, 2014

27 December 2014


This passage speaks of the personification of wisdom, the first thing brought forth by God, before there was a world or anything else.  Wisdom came into being and by it all else came into being.  How wisdom came to be we are not told, it is the underlying principle of creation as well and the continuing existence of the universe.  In our day there are many who deny the wisdom or intelligent design of the universe rather holding to blind chance and random mutation as the means by which all things came to be as we know them.  How does this explain beauty?  Indeed, how does it explain the central question of all existence, why is there anything at all instead of nothing.  Abraham Heschel, the great Jewish scholar wrote, “The biblical man does not begin with being, but with the surprise of being.  Being is neither self-evident nor self-explanatory.  Being points to the question of how being is possible.”  This reality he wrote points beyond itself, “The supreme question is not, ‘Who made the world?’ but rather, ‘Who transcends the world?’”  The only way the answer is correct is if you get the predicate right. If you don’t begin with the possibility there is a God who created in wisdom and skill, you can’t find the answer in Him.  Wisdom tells us this isn’t random or haphazard, the world operates according to scientific and mathematical principles, is it any wonder those disciplines discover them as far as they are able before descending into theory?  Wouldn’t it be more humble to say it was created by a wiser scientist than we can imagine, an intelligence beyond our own.

It is amazing isn’t it that Jesus gave bread and wine to the man who would betray Him.  If communion saved you Judas was good to go, but Jesus says otherwise.  After he had gone Jesus gave the command to love one another as the new commandment.  We need to take these words to heart in our own churches but also in the larger body of Christ that is the church all over the world.  We have brothers and sisters in our communities and also in other places who need us to love them and encourage them in this journey.  Life is tough and we were told to expect rejection just as Christ was rejected.  We are entering a new phase in our own country where we are no longer the dominant worldview and we will need one another even more as this time stretches out.  In His wisdom He created not just the world but the church to be that body of support for one another.  We are not alone in this world because we have one another and we have the Holy Spirit.  His coming into the world made all that possible.  I am truly thankful for this as one more thing the incarnation means.


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