The Wisdom of Wonder

There are times in which it seems like I have a theme for the week - every place I turn I keep getting the same message.  

This week the message is - "can I put myself before God who loves me and has chosen me, with all my foolishness and all my weakness?"  This is a quote from the Praying as you Go App that I started the day with today.

The scripture, 1 Corinthians 3: 18-23 begins like this:

"Do not deceive yourselves.  If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise."

They quote Gregory the Great who said: "Wisdom is born of wonder" and wonder brings us back to our spiritual search for relationship and belonging.

Last night in Bible study we spent time on Matthew 6: 22,23

²² “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; ²³ but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

We talked about the things that blind the eye: Prejudice, Jealousy and Self Conceit.  Barclay writes about what he calls "the necessity of the generous eye."  And we must be  generous in our judgments of others.

In our discussion last night we ended up talking for a while about racism and came to the same conclusion that my book group came to the night before:  we have much to learn.  We keep finding out how ignorant we have been about our own history as a country.  One example that someone gave was that none of us had been taught about the Tulsa race massacre in 1921.  (I lived in Tulsa during elementary school days and certainly was not taught that!)

In our book discussion Tuesday night we keep learning that we need to listen to the stories of people who are not like us and learn.  We need to live in wonder and not in certitude.

And so, I begin this day putting myself before God who loves me and has chosen me - with all my foolishness, my ignorance, my confusion, my weakness.  It is in openness to God's love that I might have the courage to stay open to learn what I need to learn even though it may be uncomfortable and painful to hear.

And much of what I also need to hear is how loved I am.  How loved we all are.  How God keeps seeking to bring us healing and reconciliation.  It seems that when we live in the wisdom of wonder we might be used more fully by God.

Here is a wonderful prayer by Walter Brueggemann 

Holy God, to whom we turn in our trouble, and from whom we receive life and well-being even in the face of death;  

We gladly and without reservation assert:  You are the one who gives life;

You are the one who hears our prayers;

You are the one who turns our jungles of threat into peaceable zones of life;

You are the one who has kept us since birth, who stands by us in our failure and shame; who moves against our anxiety to make us free.  

You are the one who does not hide your face when we call.

 So we praise you.  We worship you.  We adore you.

 We yield our life over to you in glad thanksgiving.

 As an act of praise, we submit our sick and our dead to you;

 As an act of praise, we submit more and more of our own life to you;

As an act of praise we notice your poor, and pledge our energy on their behalf;

As an act of praise we say “yes” to you and to your rule over us.  We say, “yes, yes,”

Amen and Amen.