Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Have you hugged your unknown today?

"A fool also is full of words: a man cannot tell what shall be; and what shall be after him, who can tell him?" Ecclesiastes 10:14

It is not the one who knows it all who is wise; he is just a know-it-all. A wise man is one who knows that he does not know. Wisdom is not the mere gathering and assimilation of facts; wisdom is a firm grasping of reality, an understanding of how things are, the apprehension of Truth.
Mere facts will not help you in the end anyway. Life is far to random (or at least beyond our sense of order) for knowledge of set facts to assist you. After all, knowledge is constantly changing and being updated. Even scientist (who make a living gathering the facts) will tell you that no test goes exactly as planned: every experiment must make room for the unexpected.
This is wisdom: you cannot tell what is to come, and beware of those who say they do. Not mere fortune tellers, but those who, through their extensive (or otherwise) accumulation of facts, truly believe that they have mastered life, that the deck is not stacked against them, and that all the cards are in their favor. This never turns out to be the case; life always has an ace up its sleeve.
It is the wise man who knows that he cannot know, it is wisdom to understand the reality of the unknown, the limitations of man's vision (apart from God), and that all the knowledge of man cannot usurp the sovereignty of God, Who turns the world on a dime according to His good will. It is the way of the Christian to acknowledge the unknown and walk therein; it is the just who live by faith. Beware of becoming "full of words."

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