Wisdom in Creation

(Prov 8:1-4, 19-31; Ps 8; Jn 16:12-15)

Trinity/Fathers, Sun, June 15, 2025, FBC Amherst, JG White

What is wisdom? Who is wise? 

Since it is Father’s Day, I think I will quote George White a few times, when appropriate. One of the sayings he said to me and my siblings when we were kids was: “A word to the wise is sufficient.”

A word to the wise is sufficient? I don’t think I understood this sentence when I was ten, or even sixteen. Of course, it is simply the fact that, if you are wise, you only need to be told something once. A word, to the wise, is sufficient. 

In scripture today we have some of Proverbs chapter eight. Wisdom is personified. She is a woman, out in the city, available to all and speaking out to everyone who passes by. She is in great contrast with Lady Folly, the foolish, loose woman, an evil deceiver in chapter seven here. Now, Woman Wisdom displays her teachings. 

We hear her speak of her place with Creator God, before creation. She, Wisdom, was necessary for everything to get built. Water up and down, mountains and fields, the heavens above, the seas and shorelines, the depths of the earth: all wisely constructed. 

We know the wisdom of creation. What we understand of it. Gravity, and evaporation, and photosynthesis, and planetary orbits, and time ticking. It all displays the wonderful wisdom of God. The human body: what a marvel! I seem to have been spending a lot of time lately with people who are ill or injured. And yet, I see and know the amazing, built-in ways our bodies heal. There is a wisdom in these bodies and minds we have, thanks be to God!

‘Time and tide waits for no man.’ I don’t remember if my Father says this much, but it is well known. We live in a land of tides. There is a wisdom and beauty and challenge in these restless seas around us that reach far, far inland. I probably mentioned before: the time I was camping on the Five Islands and was reading Psalm 119. 119, all about the laws of God and how wonderful they are and how the Psalm singer studies them and obeys all the rules upon rules. We usually think this longest of all the Psalms is all about the Bible, all the good guidance here. And it is. But what if we also rejoice in the rules and patterns of nature that we simply must obey. I couldn’t walk over to Moose Island if I did not study the tide times and heights. Thus, I enjoy studying all the tide charts, when I want to walk a beach, or dig clams, or see a tidal bore. If I get my timing wrong, I’m outta luck. Or, as Dad would say, ‘Tough Bananas.’

We get along better in life when we gain some wisdom. When we get in touch with the ways things work, the way God works, and the way we operate. So, we have these fellowships, Churches, to be schools of wisdom. We read the wisdom, we pray the wisdom, we sing the wisdom, we put it all into practice. We have, as Jesus once promised, the Spirit of Truth, who comes to us to tell us everything of God: of the Father and Jesus the Messiah. 

I love seeing your wisdom. I pick up on it, from time to time. You know things I don’t know. You do good things I have never done. You see real things I don’t see. You love in ways my heart has not learned yet. You are each greater and better than I realize. 

I should say, as George White says, ‘You’re a gentleman and a scholar, and a really fine person,’ or something like that. Of course, what I see and appreciate does not matter much at all, compared with how the Father esteems you. Did you hear the last verses from Proverbs eight that Marlene read? Where Creator and Wisdom enjoy people? Wisdom was rejoicing before God always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race. 

We make God happy. We need to be reminded of this. And we have this Good News for our world. Oh how our world needs this hope. That it is wise of God to enjoy us and love us, broken and brittle and even bitter as we sometimes are. 

So part of the gift of wisdom to us, in us, is to see others. To appreciate them. To be inspired and learn from our neighbours - from the closest to the farthest. Were we not made for this? If Wisdom was there at creation, so to speak, this means we are made wisely. As a Psalm says (139), we are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made.’ 

Not that growing in wisdom is easy. Because learning from our mistakes is hard. And getting along with others ain’t always easy. But it is necessary. We are neighbours of lots of people. We don’t really get to choose who our neighbours are. Or our family members. We were not made to be alone in this life. So we learn to get along. We start when we remember: God is already enjoying that person. Creator was not unwise in having that person get born and live.

‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ says my father. My father George. I don’t know if Father God says that, directly. But if we choose to live in a neighbourhood, and not hide as a hermit in the woods, we don’t get to choose who to be neighbourly to. We are called upon to be as good a neighbour to all as we can be. A neighbour to all people, and to all creatures in creation. 

If you stepped out the doors of this place at about noon today, out into creation, with the smell of lemonade still on your lips, and met a holy Woman on the sidewalk, Woman Wisdom… what do you think she might say? And what might you ask her, if you dared to speak up? For she is a voice from God the Father, & Son, & Spirit.