Wisdom

   ¹² “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. ¹³ But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. ¹⁴ He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. ¹⁵ All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.” -John 16:12
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It certainly is true that the older we get, the more wisdom we have.  We just can't learn wisdom.  It is something that is born only of experience and trial and error.  I sure wish I had even half the wisdom I have now when I was raising young children.  I can see how I would have done many things differently.  But now that I can impart wisdom to my adult children on the art of raising children, they view my "wisdom" as out-dated thinking.  ... just can't win...

I loved the book, "Tuesdays with Morrie."  It is great to see wisdom imparted and accepted as such.  If only we all could recognize true wisdom when we hear it.  But sometimes we even have trouble recognizing our own wisdom as we develop it.  It would be great if each one of us could leave behind a legacy of our own hard-earned wisdom in written form when we die. 

 Jesus did much more than that.  He knew what was coming and knew also that he had so much more to teach... much too much to write down.  Jesus had wisdom not only for that time, but wisdom for ages to come.  How could he possibly write all that down?

Of course we have the Bible, but have you read the Bible??  It takes a great deal of wisdom to understand much of it as God intended it to be understood.  Just look at all the different flavors of Christianity out there, each representing their own understanding of how God intended us to understand the Bible.

So Jesus left us with much better than the written word.  He left us the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit imparts God's wisdom to each of us.

So why do we still have so many religions and so many denominations and so many divisions of even the various denominations?  I think it is part of that wisdom that is imparted to us by the Holy Spirit.  We are all so different.  We all tend to focus on different attributes of God that help us to worship Him truly in Spirit and in Truth.  None of us have the whole truth, and all of us are wrong on some points.  But the Holy Spirit allows our humanity even in our worship and guides us to the most important aspects of the truth.  Some things, God will just show us later.

In the meantime, we should take full advantage of the Wisdom Jesus left for us in the gift of the Holy Spirit.  It can't be done without prayer.  If we have any wisdom of our own, it should be the wisdom to pray, pray, pray.

Thank you Jesus for not leaving us as orphans, but sending us the gift of the Holy Spirit to guide and teach us.  Help us to take advantage of this wonderful gift through the discipline of regular and constant prayer.  Amen.

Joys:  "Help" writing my devotion from Cecelia; dancing, reading Dr. Suess books, making shadow puppets and all the other joys of being a small child through the eyes of a grandchild; Holy week.