The Mysteries of God

When I last wrote, I talked about how I had two upcoming sermons that were gnawing at me. One of those sermons took place last night in my Intro to Preaching class. It was an interesting process from sitting down to write it to actually presenting the message...

The passage of scripture I had to write about was Proverbs 8. It was about Wisdom and how she cries out to us and how she was birthed or created before all creation and that she was a skilled craftsman alongside God. As I read the passage, I was certain without question that Wisdom was Jesus. I referred to John 1:1-3, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." Clear as a bell; simple as that; wisdom is Jesus. I put my sermon together, rehearsed it a few times and that night I tossed and turned. Something just didn't feel right. I began praying about it, asking what I was supposed to present. Wondering who was wisdom? Was it possible it was something other than Jesus?

I drove to class on Monday morning as I listened to "The Shack" on CD. A very good book that really makes you think and want more of God. In this book, God is personified as an African American woman, Jesus is a Jewish man, and the Holy Spirit is a woman. But, that morning as I listened, still thinking about my sermon and Proverbs 8, a new character was introduced, Sophia. She was the personification of...you guessed it...God's wisdom. A whole separate entity from Jesus. AAARRGGGHHHH!!! Yes, I literally yelled that as I drove down I-65.

I came home that day and poured over commentaries, read Proverbs 8 and all its referred scriptures over and over. I prayed for insight and wisdom. The next day as I was cleaning my house, I was watching a teaching series by Kathy Troccoli called, "Hope for a Woman's Heart". As I watched her, something came to me that literally warmed me inside and made me want to fall on my knees before God. (I can't do that now because of the hardware and pain in my knee but you know what I mean) I began to realize the mysteries of God. Those mysteries that are just out of my reach but securely in His hands.

I sat down and rewrote my sermon and decided to take my "congregation" on the journey I had just taken. I presented the sermon last night to my class and it was well recieved. One gentleman said he sensed that the mysteries of God were out of reach and yet they enveloped him. I love that!! That's what I felt too.

There are things about God that we will never fully understand with our limited human minds. Unless God reveals it to us, we probably don't need to know. I don't know if wisdom was Jesus. It seems like it could be and yet, it seems like it might be a whole other part of God. None-the-less, wisdom cries out to us and delights in us.

BLESSED IS THE MAN (OR WOMAN) WHO LISTENS TO WISDOM!!  Proverbs 8:34