I rejected Lady Wisdom’s counsel. I find myself eating the rancid fruit of a prideful deafness to her pleas. So I pray for wisdom. But I am met with silence and even more confusion.
Why isn’t God giving me wisdom?
Probably because I have already shown that I do not value wisdom. If comes and brings wisdom the second that I ask for it while I’m in the pit then I will not grow to value it. I will make the same mistake next time. What I need isn’t necessarily wisdom at this point. I need rescue, I need redemption, I need repentance, I need discipline.
And because God is a good and wise Father he doles out exactly the measure of discipline and grace that we need. He lets us walk in the wilderness for awhile. He makes us long for wisdom.
A story is told of Socrates that goes like this:
One day a dispassionate young man approached the Greek philosopher and casually said, ‘O great Socrates, I come to you for knowledge.‘
The philosopher took the young man down to the sea, waded in with him, and then dunked him under the water for thirty seconds. When he let the young man up for air, Socrates asked him to repeat what he wanted. ‘Knowledge, O great one,’ he sputtered.
Socrates put him under the water again, only this time a little longer.
After repeated dunkings and responses, the philosopher asked, ‘What do you want?’ The young man finally gasped, ‘Air. I want air!’ ‘Good,’ answered Socrates. ‘Now, when you want knowledge as much as you wanted air, you shall have it.‘
Our hearts are so dull that until we are made desperate for wisdom—until we have eaten the sour fruit of rejecting wisdom—we will value our own dull-headed sensibilities above the pleas of Lady Wisdom.
That is why after a season of rejecting counsel we often have to walk in the wilderness for awhile.
