Wisdom

I was reading about Solomon this morning, hoping that a little wisdom would be poured out on me from the Holy Spirit, for who could not benefit from a little wisdom? He was writing about the emptiness of possessions, and he sought after all kinds of possessions, but it did not fill him, and he called it, “I found everything to be futile and a pursuit of the wind.” But then He turns to wisdom, and this gives me hope. Here is what he says: “Then I turned to consider wisdom, madness, and folly, for what will the man be like who comes after the king? He will do what has already been done. And I realized that there is an advantage to wisdom over folly, like the advantage of light over darkness. ‘The wise man has eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.” Yet I also knew that one fate comes to them both. So I said to myself, ‘What happens to the fool will also happen to me. Why then have I been overly wise? And I said to myself that this is also futile. For, just like the fool, there is no lasting remembrance of the wise man, since in the days to come both will be forgotten. How is it that the wise man dies just like the fool? Therefore, I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me. For everything is futile and a pursuit of the wind.” Ecclesiastes 2:12-17 But still he understands that wisdom is better than all else, and at the end of the lesson, he writes: “When all has been heard , the conclusion of the matter is: fear God and keep His commands, because this is for all humanity. For God will bring every act to judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.” Ecc. 12:13-14 So what is the lesson I can learn today? What is the lesson I can share? When life happens to us all, we can enjoy that which we have or acquire, but the end product is the desire to have the wisdom, taught by God for our good. It is the desire of the heart to enjoy that which is around us, but to also realize that all is temporary. Our focus, our true focus needs to be on that which will live long after we have left this earth, for even our legacies will eventually fade away. But our life will go on, our faith will remain in Him, our presence with the Master will continue on in eternity. You and I cannot possibly fathom what that means, but through faith we trust that God is building us to something so much better. He is preparing us for something much more permanent. He is preparing us to be with Him forever. All that we learn here on this earth is preparation for that time. We can be wise and learn that all this is a building block for eternity and to keep our eyes fixed on what is above, or we can squander the time with the temporary. Today, I want to encourage you to set your eyes on the future. Set your mind on what will be when we see Jesus. Even now we cannot know what will be, neither can we know what tomorrow will bring, so if we are going to focus on something, let’s not make it about tomorrow, but on that day, when all will be made clear, and we will be in the very presence of God Himself, and walk with Jesus forevermore. Pastor Andy