Beloved: Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show his works by a good life in the humility that comes from wisdom. // James 3:13
Lately, I’ve had wisdom on my mind.
I’m about to finish a theological degree; yet, when I look into the eyes of a grieving young mother across the table as we plan her husband’s funeral, I feel in my bones that the sum of everything I’ve learned in theology school isn’t nearly enough.
Who knows what wisdom looks like?
The Psalmist tells us what it doesn't look like.
It doesn’t make you bitter about how ignorant everyone else is.
It doesn't make you ready to pick a fight with anyone who crosses you because you have superior knowledge.
Real wisdom isn’t like that.
It makes you joyful in your heart—the kind of joy that sits deep behind your eyes and shines outward, illuminating the world, but also making people glad to be with you.
Real wisdom is full of generosity—the kind that gets shared while sitting at kitchen tables. It's that hard-to-explain, special luminous quality that the venerable church ladies have (the ones who carry peppermints in their purses, the ones who know how to iron altar linens in just the right way, or how to comfort the preteen altar server who got sick in the middle of Mass without embarrassing her).
How do we get this wisdom?
Bit by bit, I think, like the father in the Gospel who recognizes that he only has a little of what he needs and wants more.
That’s enough for Jesus to work with.
We don’t have to have it all figured out. We have to trust just a bit—even a little trust is enough to get things started!—and Jesus will take what we have and make it enough, stretching it to cover the gaps.
Wisdom, then, isn’t about knowing it all, or always knowing the answer, or always knowing anything, really—except that Jesus is always enough, and that if we let Him work through us, we will be enough, too, for the moment to which He has called us to be present.
Holy Spirit, fill my heart with the kind of wisdom that will transform me from the inside out. Give me the strength to lean on Your wisdom and not on my own understanding. Amen.
Jesus is always enough. // Abbey DupuyClick to tweet
Abbey Dupuy holds a masters in liturgical music from Saint John’s University and works in parish liturgical ministry. She and her husband and four children are transplants to Minnesota. In her spare time, she loves cross-country skiing, gardening, coffee, and reading cookbooks, not usually at the same time. She is a contributing author to our children’s devotional prayer book, Rise Up and author of our Blessed Conversations: The Virtues.
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