It is time for the sun to set. I stand looking out over the Pacific amazed as wisps of clouds begin transforming into a palette of vibrant colors. A dull, listless gray transforms into bright yellow. Within minutes a warm orange churns into neon red as cooler, less brilliant, hues of purple eventually give way to the void of a pitch black night. I never tire of watching sunsets; these colorful displays of our Creator’s handiwork. After all, He is the Master at creating beautiful things, like my wife for instance.
Have you ever noticed how couples, whose relationships have endured the ravages of time, seem to have been created for one another? It is life’s great mystery how God assumes the role of matchmaker, putting this one with that one and that one with this one. Ask anyone who knows my wife and I and they will honestly tell you that she got the short end of the stick. Still, however, successful marriages seem to mesh together as part of a Divine chemistry experiment. What sometimes seems random or foolishness to us is really God working out all things for good to those who love Him and called to His purpose.
As I travel around the world I have insightful opportunities to see the world in all of her wisdom. Take for example yesterday while walking about my rainforest lanai getting ready to take a shower, I consider a sign on the wall “Help us conserve water; take short showers”. Now on the surface that sounds like sound, smart advice, however, I am traveling in an area of the world where the average, annual rainfall is over 200 inches.
Then after a short shower, followed by a delicious papaya boat for breakfast I stop by the visitor’s center in Volcano National Park. While strolling around a topographic display of the island I hear a smartly dressed park ranger say that the island is millions of years old. That is fine, if you buy into that sort of nonsense, but while I’m standing there I realize I am holding a volcanic rock that was formed in a 1974 lava flow which makes me 15 years older than the rock in my hand.
Another annoying aspect of humanity’s wisdom is wedged firmly in our superstitions. I have a small confession to make here; I love the number seven and avoid the number six like the plague. Having admitted this I still walk under ladders, love black cats and bless people when they sneeze. All this leads me to surmise that if the world can not scientifically explain something then history has shone that humanity wraps it in superstition; extraterrestrial alien visitation, the Tiki god embraced by early Polynesians, the Big Foot and Loch Ness Monster phenomenons.
The creation story is foolishness to many people who prefer the evolution of species as an explanation to life. Where the idea of life after death disappears after brain waves stop and the existence of an eternal spirit is pure fantasy. But the idea that there is a God and He sent His only Son into our world to redeem us is utter nonsense to them.
“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
Where is the one who is wise?
“Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 1:18-31