Daily Readings and Thought for August 22nd. “IT WAS NOT THE WISDOM OF THIS AGE”
Paul writes some very challenging things in his 1st letter to the Corinthians. In our days our world, through its ‘imagined’ wisdom, believes in evolution. Many think that everything in some mysterious way sort of ‘created’ itself – and wonderfully manages to work together!
The world says, but cannot explain, how the birds, the flowers and the bees for examples, sort of came into being themselves – and then became able to ‘work supportively together’ in an utterly wonderful way.
Paul told the Corinthians, in his 1st letter to them, which we started reading today, ‘For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing” [v.18] – and so it has become today in the minds of nearly everyone. Then Paul powerfully says, “but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise’ “[v.19] We do not think of “power” in that sense! Has your mind developed “power”?
It is not long now before God “destroys” the false “wisdom” which the worldly wise indulge in – the ‘wisdom’ they have acquired through human ‘scientific’ deductions; for they have come to the ‘knowledge’ that there is NO God!
In contrast, our wisdom is to recognise the events which turned the thinking in the world of the First Century upside down – as to the meaning of life. “It was not a wisdom of this age” [2 v.6] says Paul; then he stresses that, “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God, that we might understand the things freely given to us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit… [v.12,13]
God’s Spirit caused Paul and the other apostles to write things down so that we can feed our minds on this spirit inspired word. Remember how Jesus told his disciples, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” [John 6 v.63] Let us make sure our minds carefully and prayerfully feed on this God given food every day.
