Where Is Wisdom - September 16, 2010

Daily Lectionary for September 16, 2010
Psalm 36
Job 28:1-28
Acts 16:25-40
John 12:27-36a

Job 28
Okay - I jumped the gun yesterday - seems we aren't quite out of Job yet.  And a good thing - great passage today - Job asking the question, "Where is wisdom?"  "But where shall wisdom be found?  And where is the place of understanding?"  After going through the places one might look and not find - the deep and the sea - and then asking how it can be obtained - not with gold or silver or even the topaz of Ethiopia - an answer is arrived at in v.28.  "Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding."  If our primary orientation is one of proper awe of the Lord we will have at the very least the wisdom to want to turn away from evil.  Today's Psalm has a short verse that applies here:  "He sets himself up in a way that is not good; he does not reject evil."(v.4)  The person in question does not show wisdom, but rather the opposite.  And interestingly it is not the seeking of evil, it is a more passive not turning away from evil.  Evil doesn't have to have an invitation - we don't have to go try and do it.  It'll come on it's own - will we "reject" it, will we show "understanding"?

Acts 16:25-40
Again Paul is in the right place at the right time to share the good news.  The right place, in this instance, is prison and the way he got there at that particular moment was by healing a slave girl which brought on a beating and an arrest and finally prison.  That sequence of events woul seem like a disaster if one was planning how one wanted this missionary journey to go.  The healing would be okay, but the beating and arrest and jail would seem like one disaster after another.  Take away the beating, the arrest an the jail though and you don't have the encounter between Paul and the jailer.  God puts us in places, sometimes even unpleasant places it seems, for purposes.

John 12:26-36a
Nice picking up of the theme of light in this passage and the Psalms passage.  Not necessarily a relationship between the two, but interesting to get to "light" passages in the same daily reading, so that one seems to echo the other. 
Psalm 36:9  "For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light."
John 12:35-36  "So Jesus said to them, The light is with you for a little longer.  Walk while you have the light, so that darkness may not overtake you.  If you walk in teh darkness, you do not know where you are going.  While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.
In God's light we see light.  Walking in Christ's light allows us to see our way through the darkness.  We may become children of light.
All of which, to pick up on the Job passage, sounds like a path towards wisdom.