My favourite definition of wisdom has always been the old saying, ‘knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad’. Wisdom is not just about head stuff – it is about how we take what we know, what we’ve experienced, what we’ve reflected on so that we can act in ways that work well, or better. It is about life, not just thinking.

Another definition (from a very different source) comes from the book of Proverbs: ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’. The beginning. This is where it gets complicated. Learning not to put tomatoes in a fruit salad is a one-off, complete event. I can put a tick against it. But wisdom in Scripture is something we can begin, and which needs to grow. The fear of the Lord is the beginning because it creates the soil in which wisdom can grow and develop; it gives us the conditions for wisdom to flourish. Yet it does not guarantee wisdom: King Solomon is proof of this. Solomon asked for the gift of wisdom and was granted it. He clearly feared God, at least at the beginning. Yet somehow, along the way, his wisdom became divorced from following the ways of the Lord, and the end of his reign and his succession are sorry stories. He had begun on the road, but moved aside, and did not stay rooted within this original fear.

Growth in wisdom is not linear, or straightforward. Even without turning aside, as Solomon did, wisdom is sometimes only found through convoluted, difficult, and at times deeply painful paths. We see this in the Psalms, repeatedly. There is a kind of wisdom in the Psalms that says, ‘love of God and act justly and everything will be fine’, as in the great vision of Psalm 1, which sets out the flourishing of those who delight in the ways of the Lord. Then, quick on the heels of Psalm 1 comes Psalm 2, a Psalm that speaks of unstable rulers and a world in turmoil, within which ‘happy are those who take refuge in the Lord’. And so on in the Psalms – Psalms of lament consistently say, but life doesn’t work like we thought it should! Bad things happen to good people, and so often those who oppress, exploit and hurt others seem to triumph! Wisdom in the Psalm is acquired through wrestling with the promises of God on the one hand, and the realities of a tumultuous, unfair and sinful world on the other. There is a constant dialogue between the two, and wisdom is found in keeping these two things together: the reality that God is present, and that God has made promises that God will keep, and, on the other, still tell the truth of our world – that it is full of pain and conflict and violence, and that God often seems absent. And, importantly, the Psalmists not only hold these two realities together, but they turn them into prayer. They turn their wrestling, and confusion, and anger, into a conversation with God. In other words, they place their experience and reflect on it together with God, nurturing wisdom in the fertile soil of ‘the fear of the Lord’.

The word fear can be misleading. Reading Psalms of lament and hopelessness, like Psalms 88 or 137, certainly does not reveal a picture of a Psalmist cowed before God; they are brutally honest Psalms, that take issue with God for the state of the world. Wisdom is found in truth telling, and in submitting this ‘truth’ to the God whose bigger truth can illuminate what we cannot see or grasp. The Psalmists accept they are small and limited, but do not let this stand in the way of their prayer. They have been invited into partnership with the God of all things, and balance reverence and intimacy in every word.

Ultimately, new perspectives emerge, and most (though not all) Psalms of lament articulate a new found perspective, a ‘aha’ moment, when they say ‘this is how I thought things were, but you God helped me see…’ Therein lies true wisdom: a constant bringing of experience to God, honestly and vulnerably, listening to God and the people of God, and allowing God to walk with us until we see just a little more clearly. And then we repeat the process. Wisdom is something that keeps growing as we do this, something we begin but never end. It is at the heart of discipleship, and at the heart of our calling To grow in wisdom as we grow to love God, and the broken world that God has called us to love too.

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