Sure, in every generation there are plenty of Christians
around the world who can’t read, and there have been plenty throughout history who
have had much smaller portions of God’s word to mull over and put into practice
than are available to us today. But none of that matters to you or me, does it,
because we CAN read.
And of everyone to whom much is given, much will be required. That’s
our problem in a nutshell.
Sure, we can try to get by on the few stray spiritual crumbs
that tumble into our craniums on a Sunday morning between thoughts of the
report we have to write for Tuesday and the NFL game we hope to catch this
afternoon, but the daily Bible readers around us will soon leave us eating
their spiritual dust, assuming they haven’t done so already.
Three thousand years ago, Solomon said much the same thing.
9. Wisdom’s Call [Part 2] (Proverbs 8:32-36)
Daily at My Gates
Wisdom is summing up her call to men:
“Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.”
I’m going to shock you here: I do not get something earth-shakingly
wonderful out of my Bible reading every day of my life. Sometimes I can’t put
into words even a single new thing I have learned. Sometimes my heart feels dull
and callused, and sometimes my head is inattentive or preoccupied. Sometimes it
doesn’t feel like I’m getting anywhere at all.
It’s a little like my backyard, which used to be nothing but
moss because of the dense foliage overhead. It was completely reseeded and heavily
fertilized three weeks ago. Despite all the dutiful daily watering I did, for
almost ten days nothing happened. Not a thing. Well, okay, there were new
flocks of little birds congregating at the far end of the yard pecking up the
seedlings, but other than that, nada. In fact, if you take into account the seeds
stolen by the birds, the process of growing a new lawn actually appeared to be
moving in reverse.
But three weeks in, bright new blades of green grass are everywhere.
Keep checking long enough, and the cumulative effect of all those faithful
waterings becomes apparent.
Wisdom Coming and Going
Wisdom is like that. If you wait beside her doors long
enough, you’ll catch her coming or going. The problem is that she doesn’t
appear on a predictable schedule. If she did, nobody would bother waiting on
her. She’s kind of like the myth about the angel of the Lord at the pool of Bethesda who would come down “at certain seasons” and stir the
waters. The prize was said to go to the guy who stepped into the pool first.
Except of course that Wisdom has a near-infinitude of good things to share, and
there’s no competition to learn them. Everybody’s welcome to jump in the pool
at the same time, though too few seize the opportunity.
The only real competition is internal, and the only way to lose
at Wisdom’s game is to refuse to show up and wait for her because you’ve got
better things to do, or because you think you don’t really need her. Then you
lose, and big time.
Growth in Increments
The Christians I know who accomplish the most have a
lifetime of tiny, incremental, almost-invisible spiritual gains behind them.
Their increasing knowledge of Christ and personal enjoyment of him is the
product of small, faithful obedient gestures repeated thousands of times.
Unsurprisingly, they have found something like what Elijah found: that God is
present not in the wind, earthquake or fire of grand, dramatic spiritual
experiences, but in the low whisper of persistent personal fellowship.
The rather effective trick played on modern Christians is
this: Satan has convinced thousands, maybe millions of us to wait at the wrong
door, to watch daily at the wrong gate; or, to change the metaphor, to drink
from Wisdom miles downstream from its pure source, where the current is full of
pollutants and toxins. So I talk to young men who can’t be bothered to read
their Bibles every day, but have watched hundreds of Christian YouTube videos and
listened to hundreds of podcasts of people’s opinions about what the Bible
teaches. In the absence of anything else to drink, muddied water may
temporarily drive away thirst, but the person who climbs the hill to tap the
same stream at its source will be healthier and live longer.
Knowing about what’s in the Bible is not the same as knowing
the Bible, and even knowing the Bible is not the same as knowing God.
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