This weekend we will bring my oldest to her first year of Bible college. We will go through registration with her and help her set up her dorm room and then that moment that we’ve known is coming for 18 years will arrive. We will say good-bye, get in our van, and drive the 8 hours back home to practice surrender and trust in a whole new way.
This stage of life is new, but the setting is not. Twenty two years ago I made the same drive with my parents from Utah to Wyoming where my parents walked through the same steps of letting me go. In some way it seems like just yesterday and in some ways it seems like a lifetime ago. A generation and 500 miles may stand between my daughter and I soon, but really, we are in school together. In this school one never graduates because there is no end. You are welcome to join no matter your age or gender or intellectual level. We are together in God’s school of wisdom.
The invitation rings out in Romans 11:33, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and inscrutable His ways!” What depths are there to the wisdom of God? More than enough for a lifetime of seeking. Strangely enough, the fact that I can never dig to the bottom of God’s well of wisdom doesn’t defeat me, it spurs me on. Today is a day of discovery, never mind that I’m getting older and may not even leave the house. Today I am a hunter, and God’s truth and beauty and goodness are waiting to be found.
This wisdom cries out in creation, and I find His ways as my eyes trace mountain peaks out my back window, taking in the nodding heads of late summer sunflowers. It’s in the faces of my kids and husband, all undeserved grace; it’s in the simple rhythms of our home. It shines though in my interactions in the body of Christ when vulnerability and seeking women all mix to create conversations about all the most important things. Wisdom sits ready and waiting in my podcast queue and music playlist and the neat rows of books on my bookshelf, all opportunities to sit with so many others who use their gifts to join in on this school of wisdom.
All these things make my life richer and fuller, but they pale in comparison to wisdom’s textbook. Far from being dry and stale, the richest, fullest life only needs one ingredient – God’s Word, the Bible. When I read and meditate I have the opportunity to think God’s thoughts after Him. “Oh the depth!” Can this cry come from just anyone? Or only from a person who has dug deep for many years only to find the well is that much deeper than they ever could have imagined? That is a hard won cry. I want to experience this, to be one who has dug deeper and deeper into the wisdom of God every day, only to find the well is continually deeper than I can imagine. Haven’t you run into people like that? Those you know who have sat long at Jesus’ feet, who would say they have only touched the “hem of His garment” but that very thing is what has transformed them? I think of my grandmother and mother, how I cannot count the number of times I have seen their heads bent over the Bible, never graduating from God’s school of wisdom. They have lived whole lives spent in ministry to others but they need God’s Word, today – right now. This is the goal, to only lay down the shovel when I’m at death’s door. To spend a whole lifetime chasing the One who has chased me and then to settle into His presence for all of eternity.
It’s such a beautiful thought, and yet, this hard seeking, I haven’t always lived up to. I have failed some tests in God’s school of wisdom. So have those who have gone before me. So will the new student. Thankfully all that the Teacher asks is that we repent, grab our Bibles and start fresh again today. There’s this wild grace that even when we fail to dig deep into God’s Word the day is still coming when we will know Him face to face. But the digging to the depths, the finding of God’s ways and wisdom beyond our understanding will lead to awe, which will lead to worship, and although our knowledge won’t be full yet, our hearts will be. And today is a good day for a full heart.
