The Blind Wisdom of Solomon

"Man is not alive because of bread - it is by every word that is coming from the mouth of God each day."

Solomon was the wisest who had yet lived, it says.

The Queen of Sheba came from across the entire world just to listen to him, and he could go on about the meaning of things, about birds, about weather, about mountains and

seasons.

But in the end, his life was one of tremendous folly and blindness.

He knew about the seasons, winter and summer, but he couldn't tell which season it was.

"There is a time to gather stones, and a time to throw them away."

Solomon was throwing stones when it was time to gather, and gathering when it was time to cast them off. His wisdom was to know about things, but he didn't know what any of that wisdom was saying about him, about what HE needed to be doing at each point in his life.

He knew what the summer meant, the secrets of harvest season, how the seeds grow in

secret, how the ants store up food with no king.

But none of it told him if that year was his summer, or was it a wintertime for Solomon?

So it became useless.

What if you saw someone reading the scriptures every day for two hours, and came over to ask them about it? To see how they found the time.

However, suppose you notice they only read the left side page at any time, and always ignored the right one. That would be puzzling. If they ended the left page, they would just flip and start the next left page.

They would probably still learn a huge amount, it would be very encouraging. They would know some great things about many amazing people. But not nearly as much as if they just read the whole thing. It would be fragments, pieces of stories here and there, but it wouldn't quite fit together.

But the reality is, our knowledge of God and living the new life was never meant to be just reading. Even the scripture itself says again and again, both directly and in example of every great person of the stories, that they all had a day by day life with God, hearing and sometimes even arguing with him.

It was never just reading some wise words left behind for them. Their relationship was alive, dealing with life and working through terrible situations and inner struggles with God each day.

It would be just as ridiculous and incomplete to only know God from far away based on our own wisdom, as it would be to randomly tear out half the pages in scripture and only study the rest.

If there are plans and identity that God has already formed in us, then we are not left on our own to just try and think up a good plan and human efforts to do something about it.

We can be empowered, and have insight and direction for each day, things that we couldn't possibly learn even from the greatest library of wisdom, things that are for each one of us right where we are, whether in a gutter or in a palace!

If God is speaking into our life each day, then being in the gutter is not such a huge problem anymore. It may be a large mountain to climb for us, but now it is God's problem, and he isn't scared.

We don't have to feel that we are just learning about some far off king that might visit someday, someday, like a peasant who busily tills his land so that when the Noble finally visits, he will find out there's a good harvest. No, God is speaking what we need each day, working alongside us each day, working within us every single day.

It is a living wisdom, that even Solomon would have loved to be a part of, and it's ours!