A question that seems to be ageless, especially when young: So what do you want to be? So what do you what to be when you grow up? Answer: A wiseman. I will guess that the answer seldom comes up! And the Lord teaches us wisdom so we can be wise unto salvation, and walk in His way.
We have information overload in our day. On our phones, radios, TVs, internet, there is a non-stop deluge of things we can know about. If we have a discussion, and don’t know something, there is the refrain, Let me google that. But for all our reams of information, we don’t seem the happier, or society and culture calmer and quieter, just the opposite. If information alone saves, we would be so saved these days, just google it. Does not wisdom call? Does not understanding raise her voice? Proverbs 8. Yes, Wisdom calls us…because Wisdom knows another house that man frequents way too often: folly’s. We follow our follies, the never-ending trivial pursuit which gets us nowhere.
I think this quote gets at the problem:
“We can know so much, and yet not live. Man will not perish for a lack of information, but for the lack of wisdom. The conscience of the world was destroyed by those who were wont to blame others rather than themselves. Let us remember. We revered the instincts but distrusted the prophets. We labored to perfect engines and let our inner life go to wreck. We ridiculed superstition until we lost our ability to believe. We have helped to extinguish the light our fathers had kindled. We have bartered holiness for convenience, loyalty for success, love for power, wisdom for information, tradition for fashion.”
The quote is from a sermon by Rabbi Abraham Heschel he preached to a meeting of Quakers in 1938, in Germany, Nazi Germany, six weeks before the Nazi invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II and the holocaust of the Jews.
Wisdom is not only to know what is wise, but to live it. A Biblical example, Proverbs 29:11: A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back. We’re venting 24/7. But wise man quietly holds it back. Like Lincoln said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” “We can know so much, and yet not live.” “We can know so much, and yet not love.” To refrain the tongue is the Lord’s wisdom and power to save. The Lord teaching us wisdom through His Word so that we can hold back, refrain and listen to learn from the Lord and each other, especially those who a wise in the way of the Lord. And in the Lord, wisdom is not only what we know and to live, but Whom we know and first, because He is the One Who knows us even from the womb for us and our salvation.
Illumine our hearts, O Master who lovest mankind, with the pure light of Thy divine knowledge, and open the eyes of our mind to the understanding of the Gospel teaching; implant in us also the fear of Thy blessed commandments, that trampling down all carnal desires, we may enter upon a spiritual manner of living, both thinking and doing such things as are well-pleasing unto Thee: for Thou art the illumination of our souls and bodies, O Christ our God, and unto Thee we ascribe glory, together with Thy Father who is from everlasting, and Thine all-holy, good, and life giving Spirit: now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.
(Priest’s prayer before reading the Gospel in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom)
Concordia and Koinonia 
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