Happy New Year!
I love welcoming a new year! I don’t stay up late on New Years Eve and blow fancy horns. I love the quiet of the early morning on Jan 1 when it feels like the rest of the world is still sound asleep. I get to sort through my thoughts, prayers, hopes and dreams for the new year that is just dawning.
Jan 1 is also the day I start my daily Bible reading all over. I love reading through the Bible. I’ve done it for the past 10 years and I always read something new. It’s one of the miracles of God’s word – it is a living, breathing conversation that the Lord of Heavens’ Armies is having with his children.
This year, I’m reading through the Bible chronologically again. It’s the greatest story ever written and I adore the lessons I know I’m going to learn this year. Take today, for example.
Today’s reading covered the creation of the world and all that is in it, including mankind. It also included the very first sin and man’s fall from grace with God. I noticed something this morning that I hadn’t noticed before. Eve had a conversation with Satan about whether or not she should eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a tree that God specifically told them they should not eat from. Eve exaggerated the truth around that particular tree. She told Satan they were not only not allowed to eat from that tree, they weren’t allowed to even touch it. Drama!
I went back and read what God really said about the tree. He said they “shouldn’t” eat from it, but if they did, He clearly let them know the consequences if they chose to disobey – death. The Amplified Bible includes a note that they would die from eating from the tree “because of disobedience”. He never dictated their actions, but made very clear that there would be consequences based on their actions.
Even from the beginning, God created mankind with the freedom to choose. I believe He always wants us to choose His way, but he is a God that loves us so much that he created us so that our decision to love and obey him would be a choice, not simply obey blindly without any feeling or heart. There’s something about making a choice that causes us to be all in.
There were three reasons Eve was contemplating eating from that tree, even though she knew the consequences:
1 – the tree was beautiful
2 – its fruit was beautiful
And, this is the interesting thing to me
3 – she wanted the wisdom it would give her
Even from the very beginning, we have been trying to gain wisdom. God created us as curious, inquisitive creatures. It’s apparently a part of our very DNA. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with searching for wisdom. The challenge is that through the ages mankind has gotten hung up on where we search for it.
Throughout the Bible, we are shown that gaining wisdom is the way to life. Wisdom is referred to as a pearl of great price that we should give everything we have in order to attain it. Wisdom is the way to life that lasts for eternity. Jesus said he was the way, the truth and the life and no one enters heaven except through him.
And there was my lightbulb moment! It’s not that God was trying to keep his children from wisdom, like Eve and Satan thought. It’s that God desires that the wisdom we seek is Him! Not a beautiful tree, or fruit, or fancy title or degree. Its the simple, beautiful truth that God is wisdom and we have the free will to choose knowing him, seeking out more time with him that leads us to a deeper understanding of who he is.
I read through my bible every day and every year because it draws me closer to my Creator. The one who, from the very beginning of time, desired fellowship with me. The one who gave me this inquisitive brain that asks “why” like my kids did when they were little. My “why” may not always get a specific answer but it will always draw me in closer to my God, Abba, Yahweh, the Alpha and Omega, the One who was and is and always will be, Jesus!
For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
– Proverbs 2:6
