The writer's prayer for wisdom...
Illustration
The writer's prayer for wisdom is a reminder that living wisely is not a goal but a process. We move from old insights to strong, more helpful ones.
"Our natural theologies are always wrong. Always they are incomplete or disproportioned or imprecise, if not positively in error. Yet it is right to build them. Each of them constitutes a step on the way to brighter illumination, and they are necessary steps. Until the first lesson has been mastered, the first revelation assimilated, the second cannot be grasped.
"As Charles Williams once wrote, 'Unless devotion is given to a thing which must prove false in the end, the thing that is true in the end cannot enter." Unless we worship the highest that we can see, we shall not be ready for the invasion of something higher still. If we refrain from adoration until we are sure of having an object worthy of our homage, our capacity to adore will wither. But we do not need to enshrine our preparatory images as definitive idols. We look at an idol for itself, but through an image to something beyond it."
The writer of this chapter of Wisdom notes in Verse 15, "for even wisdom is under God's direction and he corrects the wise." (By Mary McDermott Shideler, Consciousness of Battle: An Interim Report on a Theological Journey, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970, p. 83.)
-- Hedahl
"Our natural theologies are always wrong. Always they are incomplete or disproportioned or imprecise, if not positively in error. Yet it is right to build them. Each of them constitutes a step on the way to brighter illumination, and they are necessary steps. Until the first lesson has been mastered, the first revelation assimilated, the second cannot be grasped.
"As Charles Williams once wrote, 'Unless devotion is given to a thing which must prove false in the end, the thing that is true in the end cannot enter." Unless we worship the highest that we can see, we shall not be ready for the invasion of something higher still. If we refrain from adoration until we are sure of having an object worthy of our homage, our capacity to adore will wither. But we do not need to enshrine our preparatory images as definitive idols. We look at an idol for itself, but through an image to something beyond it."
The writer of this chapter of Wisdom notes in Verse 15, "for even wisdom is under God's direction and he corrects the wise." (By Mary McDermott Shideler, Consciousness of Battle: An Interim Report on a Theological Journey, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970, p. 83.)
-- Hedahl
