There are two passages assigned for today!
SCRIPTURE: Ecclesiastes 11
OBSERVATION/APPLICATION:
Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things. [Ecclesiastes 11:5]
The Teacher makes some very basic observations, yet shares them as deep and profound:
When clouds are heavy, the rains come down.
Whether a tree falls north or south, it stays where it falls.
Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant.
If they watch every cloud, they never harvest. [Ecclesiastes 11:3-4]
Is wisdom that complicated, isn’t much of it just plain common sense?
Then why do people have such a hard time discerning wisdom from folly?
Why are we often blind to common sense, missing the obvious and blundering recklessly into folly/
The reason, I think, is that we have lost our sense of God, and this makes us blind to everything else.
Without God we become foolish.
At that time Jesus prayed this prayer: “O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever, and for revealing them to the childlike. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way! My Father has entrusted everything to me. No one truly knows the Son except the Father, and no one truly knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” [Matthew 11:25-27]
In order to understand life and truth, we first need to reorient our hearts and minds to God.
I am no saying we need to understand God first, but that we need to know God in all His greatness and mystery.
A heart that is humble and reverent before God, that comes to the Lord in humility and dependence, discovers the meaning of life and truth.
This is why the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
In our sin-blinded hearts, we need God’s help to see and honour Him appropriately; we need the Father to be revealed to us in simple terms.
This is why God comes in the form of Jesus Christ; you might say that Jesus is “God for dummies”.
People who think they are wise and clever cannot see this, but those who are humble and child-like see God in Christ.
Through Jesus, we see wisdom, life and truth in real time, real life.
We still cannot understand the deeper mysteries, like the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb (though some people think they do), but through Jesus we get a sense of Who God is, who we are, of what life is all about, and of how we ought to live.
Those who are humble and childlike will see it… and rejoice!
PRAYER:
Lord, help me to avoid the folly of youth, and to discover the humility of childlikeness. Help me to bow before Your mystery, and to pay attention to the life and truth You embody.