Pastor and author G.K. Chesterton tells the story of a boy who was with his mom in a park. The boy was lying on his back in a sunny spot that was speckled with the shade of tall trees all around him. He was staring up into the sky, paying attention to nothing in particular—the blue overhead, the wispy clouds that passed, the breeze up against his face, the rustling of leaves in the trees above and around him.
As the wind picked up in the park, the boy declared to his mother, “I don’t like the wind at all. It blows in my face too much, and it makes me shut my eyes when all I want to do is watch the trees.” To which mother replied, “Well, wherever there are trees, there’s wind to blow them about.”
Misunderstanding his mother’s statement, the boy answered, “Well, why don’t you take away the trees, then the wind would stop blowing.” The boy’s mother laughed.
Nothing could be more human and excusable than the belief that it is the trees which make the wind. Take the trees away and the wind wouldn’t be there. There’s too many of us who say that it’s only the visible that can stir the invisible and not the other way around, that it’s only what we can see that has what it takes to move a thing and get it going. What would it take for the little boy and all the other much older and supposedly wiser ones—those who blandly hold that it is the movement of trees that creates the wind—to see what the poets and artists and the most faithful know: What we can’t see has much more power than what we can. That it’s the first that guides the second. That there’s more in motion than we have eyes for.
The Book of Proverbs can help us see what most people can’t. These proverbs speak about an invisible creative force in the world that can guide people in how they should live. Wisdom. Scripture speaks of Wisdom in the feminine. Even though we can’t see her she affects everything we do.
Proverbs talks about wisdom as something God created at the very beginning that’s woven into the world, and it’s how the world is held together. Proverbs wants us to pay closer attention to the way God put the world together and how He put us together and what for. It also wants us to pay attention to the difference between how we put together the world on our own versus how God put it together. Our first glances and simple notions and easy answers do no honor to the beauty and complexity at work in the world and in each one of us.
The way we see is never sufficient. We see the trees moving the wind. “Wisdom” is the word scripture uses to talk about the great distance between the way God has ordered the world and the way we do.
The first thing we need to know is that we’re not equipped with Wisdom. It doesn’t come with years. Instead, it comes with humility and seeing ourselves and others in proper perspective and with a healthy respect and reverence for God—what scripture calls fear. True humility is not thinking lowly of yourself but thinking accurately of yourself and remembering how small you are in the scheme of things and finding a way to celebrate that. From humility, we realize that we don’t know everything. Then we stand a chance of becoming curious. We ask questions. We learn. We become seekers. Then, the more we learn and seek, the better we get at life. That is wisdom, responding faithfully to God in every aspect of our lives and holding it all in reverence.
Occasionally I have to remind myself to look up, to raise my eyes above this 5 foot 5-level they're at and see more. I'm a book reader and a screen gazer. I would do well to glance farther ahead more often. It's too hot for Karen and me to go hiking right now, but whenever we do, I frequently catch myself looking down at the trail, at the little plot of path directly in front of me. There are moments along the way when I become conscious of my tendency to glance downward, and I raise my eyes, lift my head to take in the bigger view, the broad sweep of the forest around us. But those moments never last too long. In my determination to trudge on, I quickly lower my gaze back down again.
My parents live in Ruckersville. It's not out in the middle of nowhere, but it is quiet and peaceful. The big news is they’re getting a Walgreen’s and a Starbucks. When I lived in West Virginia and would go home to visit, my dad and I would walk our dogs together along their street. We took slow and contemplative strolls those evenings. The light pollution in Richmond, where I grew up, is so that it was a rare night when we could look up and see anything more than Orion's belt. But in Ruckersville, you can see it all, brilliant and visible, if you to take the time to look up at it.
One night before we headed back inside, my dad grabbed two pairs of binoculars. We searched the skies up close. My dad gave me one of those pairs of binoculars to take home with me. I should take the time to glance upward more often. Take in the long view. Who knows what I could see, what I would discover about God and about myself, if I spent more time with my eyes raised toward the heavens.
The wise look up to see how large the world is, they know how small they are in it, and they celebrate that. It’s the wind that blows the trees. It’s not cause for concern, but for praise and humility. It’s an invitation to respond to God faithfully, paying prayerful attention to what God is doing in the world, within us, around us, and well beyond us and forever asking how we can participate in it.
All praises to the One who made it all and finds it beautiful! Alleluia! Amen.