A friend of mine swears he once got so lost on back roads that his GPS announced, “You have arrived at a point beyond all knowledge.”
I often think of that line when I consider the eruption of disasters around the world. I sometimes wonder if we’re losing the ability to solve, navigate, or even understand crises. Have we arrived at that place beyond knowledge? Is that why anger and warfare seem to just hang in the air like smoke in a saloon?
Maybe we need to pause, take a deep breath, and rethink the way we interact with our fellow earthlings. Could those catastrophic events reflect the planet’s anguish? Might the earth itself be calling for something new? Something beyond our exhausted views of policy, politics, religion, and culture? Perhaps it’s time to ride away on a different horse than the one that brought us here.
Yet, oddly, we don’t seem to show any move toward change. Discord slowly tightens around our society like a boa constrictor.
That may be why the pervasive hum—talk radio, broadcast news, social media, award ceremonies, mega-events, and more—has produced division, but very little vision.
Do you think we may need more wisdom than entertainment, gentleness of spirit rather than rough answers, and love instead of rage? And maybe that begins with you and me—over lunch, on the golf course, standing around a campfire, or roofing a widow’s house.
Wisdom is counterintuitive. It perfectly aligns with the boundless dimensions of eternal truth, but it also stoops to lift those out on life’s margins. Wisdom dignifies and beautifies the humble.
If true wisdom comes down, as the Bible says, why not admit that we need that wisdom. Down here. Now? Why pretend to be all-wise and powerful? Wouldn’t it be better to just humble ourselves, admit we are exhausted and empty, and ask for help? What’s the downside of living that way each day?
We sometimes think of wisdom as a personal power tool. But “the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.” (James 3:17, NKJV)
This may be a good time to lift our eyes to that higher and cleaner wisdom. Think of the on-ramp to the future as a controlled access highway; the gate will only open to the wise—that is, the pure, the peaceable, the gentle, the merciful, and the humble.
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