We ask again: what does it mean for God to give us wisdom? What kind of a gift is it?
If another transportation illustration may be permitted, it is like being taught to drive. What matters in driving is the speed and appropriateness of your reactions to things and the soundness of your judgment as to what scope a situation gives you. You do not ask yourself why the road should narrow or screw itself into a dogleg wiggle just where it does, nor why that van should be parked where it is, nor why the driver in front should hug the crown of the road so lovingly; you simply try to see and do the right thing in the actual situation that presents itself. The effect of divine wisdom is to enable you and me to do just that in the actual situations of everyday life.
To drive well, you have to keep your eyes skinned to notice exactly what is in front of you. To live wisely, you have to be clear-sighted and realistic – ruthlessly so – in looking at life as it is. Wisdom will not go with comforting illusions, false sentiment, or the use of rose-colored glasses. Most of us live in a dream world, with our heads in the clouds and our feet off the ground; we never see the world, and our lives in it, as they really are. This deep-seated, sin-bred unrealism is one reason why there is so little wisdom among us – even the soundest and most orthodox of us. It takes more than sound doctrine to cure us of unrealism. There is, however, one book in Scripture that is expressly designed to turn us into realists, and that book is Ecclesiastes. We need to pay more heed to its message than we commonly do. Let us look at that message for a moment now.
“A moment” occupies several pages in the book (“Knowing God,” by J.I. Packer) … I’m not sure yet if I’ll post all of it or not. Part, anyway. Stay tuned.
From J.I. Packer’s book, “Knowing God,” chapter 10: God’s Wisdom and Ours.
If you stand at the end of a platform at York Station, you can watch a constant succession of engine and train movements which, if you are a railway enthusiast, will greatly fascinate you. But you will only be able to form a very rough and general idea of the overall plan in terms of which all these movements are being determined (the operational pattern set out in the working timetable, modified if need be on a minute-to-minute basis according to the actual running of the trains).
If, however, you are privileged enough to be taken by one of the higher-ups into the magnificent electrical signal-box that lies athwart platforms 7 and 8, you will see on the longest wall a diagram of the entire track layout for five miles on either side of the station, with little glow-worm lights moving or stationary on the different tracks to show the signalmen at a glance exactly where every engine and train is. At once you will be able to look at the whole situation through the eyes of those who control it: you will see from the diagram why it was that this train had to be signaled to a halt, and that one diverted from its normal running line, and that one parked temporarily in a siding. The why and the wherefore of all these movements becomes plain once you can see the overall position.
Now, the mistake that is commonly made is to suppose that this is an illustration of what God does when He bestows wisdom: to suppose, in other words, that the gift of wisdom consists in a deepened insight into the providential meaning and purpose of events going on around us, an ability to see why God has done what He has done in a particular case, and what He is going to do next. People feel that if they were really walking close to God, so that He could impart wisdom to them freely, then they would, so to speak, find themselves in the signal-box; they would discern the real purpose of everything that happened to them, and it would be clear to them every moment how God was making all things work together for good. Such people spend much time poring over the book of providence, wondering why God should have allowed this or that to take place, whether they should take it as a sign to stop doing one thing and start doing another, or what they should deduce from it. If they end up baffled, they put it down to their own lack of spirituality.
Christians suffering from depression, physical, mental, or spiritual (note, these are three different things!), may drive themselves almost crazy with this kind of futile inquiry. For it is futile: make no mistake about that. It is true that when God has given us guidance by application of principles He will on occasion confirm it to us by unusual providences, which we will recognize at once as corroborative signs. But this is quite a different thing from trying to read a message about God’s secret purposes out of every unusual thing that happens to us. So far from the gift of wisdom consisting in the power to do this, the gift actually presupposes our conscious inability to do it, as we shall see in a moment.
The next section is shorter; I’ll post it tomorrow (or sometime).
It’s dark and warm on an April evening, and quiet. I’m sitting in the car outside the grocery store, waiting to pick up my brother at the end of his shift. Evidently I came too soon … I turn the key, roll the window down, shut the car off again. There’s not a breath of wind, no traffic on the highway just a stone’s throw to my left. So quiet.
Across the road, a man up on a narrow platform is changing out the letters on the town’s all-purpose sign – out of place under a lonely street light, because by nine thirty the whole rest of our little population has shut down and gone home to watch TV.
People call in to use this sign for anything from birthday greetings, to event announcements, to sale advertisements. Tonight’s installment is one of the latter: “P&S ELECTRIC, 1/2 OFF SMARTPHONES THROUGH APRIL 30.” I didn’t even know we had a place that sells smartphones in town. Seems we do.
He has the letters and numbers all stacked up in order already; I can hear the clack of each one as he slips it into place. He coughs a few times, loud in the stillness. “THROUGH APRIL 30″ barely fits on the bottom line. When he gets to the end, he scrounges around on his platform for a moment, then slings a messenger bag (filled, I imagine, with black plastic letters and red plastic numbers) over his shoulder, and climbs down a rickety ladder that swings a little beneath his weight.
He leaves the ladder where it is and wanders resolutely back across the empty highway, pauses halfway across the parking lot to turn and scrutinize his letter work. Evidently satisfied, he continues on his way; sees me; waves awkwardly on his way into the store.
I don’t know how to describe times like these – the achy, sad-sweet clarity of something that seems like wisdom. I tremble often on the edge of ingratitude, but this tugs me back. This is home.
Every spring, my heart surges joyfully with the new, pale green, the sunshine, the warm, the short sleeves, the dirt, the singing birds, the newborn creatures, the flip flops, the tulips, the hope that comes back into the world like good news after a long time of lying on your face in wet concrete. Or, you know. Something.
There’s a lot of goodness in the spring. But every spring, I remember. I forgot about the flies.
I hate flies. My mom calls them lesser demons. My dad hunts them with vim (and a fly swatter). It’s a family thing, I guess.
They’re just so utterly … pointless, you know? Other bugs hover and buzz and land on things too, but with less excess, and usually with some kind of point. I mean, mosquitoes are annoying and disgusting and they spread all kinds of disease, but at least there’s a method behind their madness. They subsist on blood, so they hover around and bite us to get our blood. Makes sense.
But WHAT ON EARTH DO FLIES EVEN WANT???? They just buzz and buzz, and land on your plate, and buzz off again, and fly around in circles around your head and around your head and around your head and around your …. yeah. You’ve been there. Violence is the only answer.
One fly will happily torment the same person all afternoon, weather permitting, without gaining a single. thing. from the enterprise. Flail and roar as you may, it just keeps coming back. We all know this.
So I hate flies.
But then the other day, sudden enough to have been sloshed out from someone else’s brain accidentally into mine, I had this thought:
What if flies just love … everything?
What if their flight patterns are mad and erratic, not because they’re reincarnated Nazi fighter pilots, but because they just take so much delight in the world and their little twenty-four hours in it, that they almost can’t stand it?
What if clouds of flies all about stomping, swishing livestock, are actually “Celebrate Life” parties?
What if, out of an entire world full of air, they choose the cubic foot in front of my face, just because they want to spend time with a living soul?
What if they won’t go away no matter what I do, because they just love me so much?
What if they eat garbage and poop on purpose, because they want to save the good food for everyone else?
What if they don’t care if there’s anything to gain from their one-sided relationships with us, what if they’re resigned to us hating their very existence and committing ourselves to their extermination, because their pathetic little exoskeletal lives are buoyed by such ecstatic joy and fondness for … well, everything?
That was a weird thought.
I still hate flies … but now I feel guilty about it.
Do you ever find, for whatever sudden reason, that you’ve been protecting yourself from needing to ask God for help, by preemptively electing not to care what He does? You kink the line between your actual self, and who you walk around being – and your painted mask will keep on keeping on, smiling serenely regardless of how things turn out. Why pray, when you’re already fine with all the potential outcomes? You need only to watch and wait, a stoic spectator, untouchable.
I don’t know if you do that. I do.
Here’s a little encapsulation of what I mean, less than an hour old, perfect because of its ever-so-very-small silliness.
I was sitting out on our deck, reading, on this beautiful, windy Sunday afternoon. I’m sure my hair is a wreck now … I haven’t checked yet. After awhile I laid my book down on my lap and stretched back on my lawn chair (we don’t have our actual patio furniture out yet), alternately musing, praying, and dozing under the sun and the wind-swept clouds.
Evidently I was fidgeting in the midst of my peaceful lounging, because without realizing that I was touching my ears, I suddenly found that one of my earrings had fallen out, and just the back of it was clinging (weirdly) to the back of my ear.
I’d moved around a great deal through the course of the afternoon, and had no idea at what point the thing might have become dislodged. A re-tracing of my steps would have touched most of the rooms in the house, and zig-zagged across all manner of lawn and gravel. Even if it had been a recent calamity, my current situation on the deck offered ample opportunity for something so small to tumble blissfully down between the slats, never to be seen or heard from again by humankind.
I like the earrings in question, and they match one of my necklaces nicely; but they were a Wal-Mart purchase, with no sentimental or monetary value worth mentioning. My immediate, reflexive thought was something like, “Well, God, I’ve lost my earring … that’s a drag, I liked wearing these. If I could find it that’d be cool … but if not, that’s fine too. It’s just an earring. I don’t really care about it that much.”
The words themselves weren’t really wrong. But I think my heart was whispering faithlessly behind them, “I’ll pray about this, because I know it’s right and I want to be closer to You; but You can’t hurt me by not answering, because I don’t really care that much one way or the other. This is a small, stupid thing, and I’m not sure how You’re going to answer, so here’s a way out.”
This wasn’t something I’d thought about consciously before, but it was shaped by what I’ve been reading lately about prayer. So when God caught my conscience and pointed out what I was doing, my softened heart tried again. “Lord, it is just an earring, but I really would like to find it. You know exactly where it is. Would You help me?” No qualifications, just an honest request. If the answer was “no,” then I’d deal with that when it came.
I stood up, walked once around the lawn chair – and there was the earring.
What do you think? How often do we not have, simply because we don’t trust our Father enough to ask? How often do we restrict our prayers to the things we think He’s likely to answer, or the things we’ve been taught we should desire and ask for? God already sees our hearts, so much more clearly than even we do – so who do we think we’re fooling by stuffing down what we’re really thinking, and presenting Him with all these “proper” requests instead? Paul Miller comments, in a really excellent book I’m still reading (“A Praying Life”, in case you’re interested) that, “Sometimes we try so hard to be ‘good’ that we forget to be real.” I think he’s right. Of course we should be praying, too, that this ‘real-ness’ would be conformed more and more to His likeness … but in the meantime, what’s the use of faking our way through? Why not pray, still reverently, but also with total honesty – telling God what’s actually on our hearts, while being willing for Him to change it if it’s wrong?
This is a deep, rich subject with so many ditches to avoid diving into. There’s so much to be said about it … this is just one little wide-eyed thought. Sometimes God sanctifies us by answering “no.” But sometimes He says “yes” in astonishing ways – and how will we know, how will we see Him at work, unless we dare to ask?
Later: same day, same pair of earrings: I was de-fancifying myself after evening worship, deep in distraction over the re-excavation of an issue with which I thought I’d already made peace. In any case, I took off my earrings, and naturally dropped one of the backs. And I think every female with pierced ears knows, earring backs become invisible immediately upon making contact with bedroom carpet. Through a glum haze, I remembered the earlier earring incident, and half-heartedly prayed that I could quickly locate the tiny thing. But I didn’t really think I would, and only looked around for a few seconds. I gathered some things together, then started to walk out of the room – and stepped on something. It was, of course, the back of my earring. And so we see, too, that God’s goodness doesn’t depend on the earnestness or virtue of our prayers … and that the smallest hammers can be used to strike the most crushingly beautiful chords in the human heart. God can use an earring to shatter the self-destructive shells His children build around themselves to keep Him out. And He did.
I don’t remember what we did at first … maybe just played games at your house. Later we walked to the park, all of us, talking and laughing and spread out wandering all the way across the empty street. It was evening, and the summer light was low. I think we played tag on the playground when we got there … something dumb like that. Something we were really too old for. It was fun.
We got together almost every month. The idea was organized, but we were disorganized. We were supposed to “do” things, but we spent so much time doing nothing, just sitting around and talking … sometimes about what we should do next. Usually not. It was a running joke, an inside joke. We belonged together, and we had inside jokes. We were all misfits, more or less. As much as teenagers ever do, we let our guards down; in a young, uncertain way we knew and understood each other. We belonged.
We were walking back from the park that evening, with red blood rushing ecstatically in our veins after the game, from the hilarity and the good-natured arguments and the victory that everyone impossibly claimed. Our shadows were long ahead of us in the gold-green light. A couple of us were walking together in everyone’s midst, and then we started to run. Our feet were impatient on the pavement, and we wanted to hear wind in our ears, just wanted to run.
We caught up with you and some of the others, kept sprinting. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught yours. Your eyebrows shot up, we both laughed, and you took off after us. For a block or more we ran like that, just glad to be alive and together in the childhood of the year. Outside of my family, I don’t think I ever knew, as surely as I did in those golden minutes, that I was part of a group that really belonged together. We fit.
Several years have gone by now. We graduated, scattered. Some of you are married now. Everyone wasn’t at all the weddings. That’s just the way it goes … everyone understood, I think. Some of you have children, a few others might be expecting now … I’m not sure. Some have moved away. We don’t all belong together, like we did. Technology made the world small, but somehow we still lost track of each other. I don’t know. People just grow apart. They change.
But in sepia tones, those yesterdays hang on – little moments that stood out more than anyone knew, that changed who we became. For a moment we sprinted together, reckless and joyful through a quiet evening; and for some reason, it lasted forever.
Alright. Well, I’m going to have you start out by reading Psalm 88. It’s a little bit lengthy, but not a lot lengthy (only 18 verses), and I have it all typed out here for you, and it’s the Word of God. So: read it.
O LORD, God of my salvation,
I have cried out day and night before You;
Incline Your ear to my cry.
For my soul is full of troubles,
And my life draws near to the grave.
I am counted with those who go down to the pit;
I am like a man who has no strength,
Adrift among the dead,
Like the slain who lie in the grave,
Whom You remember no more,
And who are cut off from Your hand.
You have laid me in the lowest pit,
In darkness, in the depths.
Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
And You have afflicted me with all Your waves. Selah.
You have put away my acquaintances far from me;
You have made me an abomination to them;
I am shut up, and I cannot get out;
My eye wastes away because of affliction.
LORD, I have called daily upon You;
I have stretched out my hands to You.
Will You work wonders for the dead?
Shall the dead arise and praise You? Selah.
Shall Your lovingkindness be declared in the grave?
Or Your faithfulness in the place of destruction?
Shall Your wonders be known in the dark?
And Your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
But to You I have cried out, O LORD,
And in the morning my prayer comes before You.
LORD, why do You cast off my soul?
Why do You hide Your face from me?
I have been afflicted and ready to die from my youth;
I suffer Your terrors;
I am distraught.
Your fierce wrath has gone over me;
Your terrors have cut me off.
They came around me all day long like water;
They engulfed me altogether.
Loved one and friend You have put far from me,
And my acquaintances into darkness.
And that’s it. That’s how it ends. Pretty dismal, right? Now, I’m sure there are a zillion and seven astonishing things that could be said about it, and have been said – and I’d encourage you (and myself) to seek them out, and hear what God is revealing of Himself to His people in this extremely dark Psalm. But my purpose this evening is not to commentate, not to expound or elaborate – but merely to wail publicly over the miserable treatment the song gets in the Psalter Hymnal.
Observe, briefly, its only setting therein (with the first verse transcribed to help you out):
Oh. My. Goodness. Do tunes even exist that are less fitting to the text than this? Maybe they do, but I can’t think of any.
It’s not a bad tune, don’t get me wrong. In fact, I kind of like it. If you felt like singing a story-song about an adventure you had with your pony in a field of daisies, or maybe something about Dufflepuds or raspberry sherbet, it would be a charming, splendid choice.
But set to Psalm 88? It’s an atrocity. How can you possibly sing words written from the depths of a soul so utterly desolate and torn apart, to a tune that belongs at a carnival – and really mean what you’re singing? It’s a musical lie, and borders on making a mockery of the text. And? In spite of the many undeniable treasures in our well-beloved blue hymnal, this one is not at all the only one of its highly regrettable kind.
OK. OK. OK. Clearly this makes me upset, maybe more than it should. Maybe (maybe) sometime I’ll write (or link to) something more level-headed and thorough on this subject. In the meantime, here’s my own silly attempt at an alternate tune – penned, perhaps, as much out of exasperation as anything, and played rather too quickly.
(Now, I think there are about a kajillion things to know about how to write good music, and I personally know approximately zero of them – so I’m not under the misguided impression this will be of any lasting value. But, hey … at least it’s in a minor key. The third verse is here included, just to mix things up a bit.)
Ahhh, me. This is just a venting post. I don’t have a ready-made solution right now. (At least, not one more specific than “Somebody! Please! Find or write new music for these Psalms!”) But there it is … and I feel a little (a little) better now, knowing that you know, too.
To finish, here’s the entirety of the hymnal’s versification of Psalm 88, in case it interests you:
Lord, the God of my salvation,
Day and night I cry to Thee;
Let my prayer now find acceptance,
In Thy mercy answer me.
Full of troubles and affliction,
Nigh to death my soul is brought,
Helpless, like one cast forever
From Thy care and from Thy thought.
Thou has brought me down to darkness,
‘Neath Thy wrath I am oppressed;
All the billows of affliction
Overwhelm my soul distressed.
Thou has made my friends despise me,
And companion-less I go,
Bound, and helpless in my bondage,
Pining in my bitter woe.
Unto Thee, with hands uplifted,
Daily I direct my cry;
Hear, O Lord, my supplication,
Hear and save me here I die.
Wilt Thou wait to show Thy wonders
And Thy mercy to the dead?
Let me live to tell Thy praises,
By Thy lovingkindness led.
Still, O Lord, renewed each morning
Unto Thee my prayer shall be;
Cast me not away forever,
Let me now Thy favor see.
All my life is spent in sorrow,
Grief and terror always nigh,
Waves of wrath have surged about me;
Show Thy mercy ere I die.
Friend and lover are departed,
Dark and lonely is my way;
Lord, be Thou my Friend and Helper,
Still to Thee, O Lord, I pray.
Lord, the God of my salvation,
Day and night I cry to Thee;
Let my prayer now find acceptance,
In Thy mercy answer me.
(utterly un-polished – just musing while reading “A Praying Life” … on pg. 134ish now)
Why does Jesus not clarify His radical promises about prayer in John 14 & 15? They’re true, in a wonderfully exciting way, but they seem unbalanced. Clarification comes in passages like James 4:2-3 … but if this was the whole picture all along, why didn’t Jesus just say so? Taken by themselves, His words are hard to mesh with “real life,” and are so easily (and frequently) misconstrued. Why make it so hard to understand?
Maybe it’s because what Jesus said (“whatever you ask in My name, that I will do”) really is the whole, beautiful promise. These are the words of God to us. But because of our sinful, darkened hearts, we will insist on finding ways to misinterpret and misunderstand how this works – ways to abuse the promise so that it “won’t work” – not asking, and thus not receiving; or else asking wrongly, out of a selfish heart – so because of us, clarification is needed. And Jesus knew that eventually, James would provide that clarification.
He didn’t provide a one-verse quick-fix for understanding how to pray, though. We can only really ‘get’ one passage in light of others. In order to understand who God is and what He wants for and from us, we have to spend time in His Word, devoting ourselves to puzzling through it and pursuing truth with all our energy. Not only the solution, but the very way of getting to it, is perfectly designed and orchestrated. We can’t just run our finger down an alphabetical index, find our answer, and get on with life. We have to get close to Him, and stay there.
Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane demonstrates perfect balance. He avoids the Not Asking cliff, saying “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me” (Mark 14:36). Those who err on the Not Asking side surrender to God before they are real with Him. Sometimes we try so hard to be good that we aren’t real. The result is functional deism, where we are separated from God. The real you doesn’t encounter the real God.
In the next breath, Jesus avoids the Asking Selfishly cliff by surrendering completely: “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (14:36). Jesus is real about His feelings, but they don’t control Him, nor does He try to control God with them. He doesn’t use His ability to communicate with His Father as a means of doing His own will. He submits to the story that His Father is weaving in His life.
If you try to understand Jesus’ prayer purely on a rational level, it seems crazy. Why would Jesus ask His Father for something He knows He wouldn’t do? But reason is only part of who we are as image bearers of God. Desire, feelings, and passion are also part of who we are. If we remember that Jesus is a person and not a robot, then it makes perfect sense.
An analogy may help. On 9/11 the intense heat of the fire int he World Trade Center made it impossible for those trapped by the flames to descend but also impossible to stay where they were. People responded with their only alternative – jumping to their deaths, many holding hands as they leaped. What’s the point of holding hands? They knew they were going to die, whether or not they were holding hands. But life is more than logic. As humans, we reflect the complexity of God. Part of divine beauty is that we were made for community, so when we leap to our death, we hold hands with a friend. When Jesus asks His Father to “remove this cup from me,” He knows that the divine community He shares with His Father is going to be broken at the cross. In asking and surrendering, just for a moment, He is holding hands with His Father.
