Midweek Faith Lift
The Power of Wisdom
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
August 6, 2025
Spiritual Passages
July 29, 2025
Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground. As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice, you are ready to shout out, "You idiot! What's wrong with you? Are you blind?" But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped into you actually is blind. He, too, is sprawled in the spilled groceries, and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by sympathetic concern: "Are you hurt? Can I help you up?" Our situation is like that. When we clearly realize that the source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can open the door of wisdom and compassion.
"We cannot change the way the world is. But by opening to the world as it is, we may discover gentleness, decency, and bravery are available, not only in ourselves, but in all human beings." - Chogyam Trungpa, Buddhist teacher
Affirmative prayer for today: Infinite Spirit that sees all that we do not see, that knows all that we do not know, open our minds, hearts and very being to the power of Spiritual wisdom that it may guide us in all ways and in all the days of our lives. Amen.
We have arrived at the power of Wisdom, which is right after Love. These two are often paired because they work so very well together. We have been exploring the Power of Love and now we will explore how that power is energized and guided by Wisdom. The spiritual tradition of Wisdom is ancient and reaches back to the Greeks who called Wisdom Sophia. The Gnostics, early Christian mystics, portray Sophia as the “energy of spiritual discernment” which partners with the creative principle to bring the world into form. The energy of Wisdom runs as a thread through the Jewish tradition and Hebrew Scripture. The Hebrew word for Wisdom is chokma and is related in feminine terms. There are several scripture passages that give us direction when it comes to Wisdom. We read this in the Hebrew Scripture:
Proverbs 4:5-8
5 Get wisdom; get insight: do not forget nor turn away
from the words of my mouth.6 Do not forsake her, and she will keep you; love her, and she will guard you.7 The beginning of wisdom is this: get wisdom,
and whatever else you get, get insight.8 Prize her highly, and she will exalt you; she will honor you if you embrace her.
The Psalms and Proverbs are described as the Wisdom literature of the Hebrew Scripture, so “getting wisdom, getting insight” are important steps in learning to live in accordance to God’s will. And the promise is powerful: wisdom will exalt you, lift you up and honor you if you embrace her. That is no small promise for sure. The tricky part is how exactly do you “get wisdom and get insight?”
Wisdom is an inborn spiritual power and expresses as a conscious level of functioning unlike instinct which comes from biological intelligence. We can compare wisdom to knowledge, but it is not accurate to do this. Knowledge is accumulated information, which we can analyze, compare and use to reach conclusions. Knowledge tells us in the opening story that the person who bumped into us is blind. Wisdom would have us check it out first before we yell at him! Wisdom asks us to do something with the information we have, or NOT do something in the case of the blind person. Rev. Linda, in Divine Audacity defines wisdom this way: “Wisdom is applied knowledge, our decision-making capacity through mental evaluation, spiritual discernment and moment by moment intuition.” (p. 136)
The Power of Wisdom is therefore an active power that we cultivate in all aspects of our human experience, moment by moment. When we encounter very complex, tricky, complicated situations created by our human propensity to react first and think about it later, then we have just experienced an opportunity to cultivate spiritual Wisdom. If you miss the opportunity, not to worry, it is a moment-by-moment event and another opportunity will show up soon enough! We have this inborn spiritual power of wisdom, and our challenge is to learn what it is saying to us even as we are navigating the complexities of our everyday life.
There is another passage from the Hebrew Scripture that really describes this for us:
Isaiah 30:20-21
20 Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any longer, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. 21 And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
Our challenge is to listen to that word of Spirit that is telling us, this is the way; walk in it. When we decide to pause and listen to that voice of Spirit, we are choosing to live at the intersection of our divine/human self. The Christ of us is a mediator. The Christ of us respects our human finite nature but doesn’t allow us to get trapped in it. There is always a higher path and that is the Wisdom path.
Jesus is best described as a “Wisdom teacher” who teaches us how to “bridge the gap” between our human instincts and reactions and our higher divine consciousness. The nature of the Divine is revealed in the Hebrew Scripture as the Flame that burns but does not consume the burning bush that Moses experiences in the story in Exodus 3:1-6. The flame is revealed as an angel of God speaking through the flame. How do we bring the flame of our Divinity into our humanity without feeling lost and consumed by it? That is the path of Jesus who is our Wisdom teacher. We learn to listen, learn and hold space for both/and as we navigate the hardest, most challenging parts of our lives.
The components of Wisdom are Judgment, Discernment and Intuition. All are necessary for us to cultivate this spiritual power of Wisdom such that it is truly activated in our everyday life. It is clear from the passage in Isaiah that the adversity and afflictions of our lives are truly our greatest teachers. It is in meeting these that we have our most power-filled opportunities to learn and grow in our power of Wisdom. Our wisdom capacity is present in body, mind and spirit in every dimension of living. When we cultivate wisdom, we begin to live life as a conscious sacrament, a holy journey whereby we realize our wholeness.
In his book, The Twelve Powers of Man, Charles Fillmore writes on p. 45;
In the body, conclusions are reached through experience; in intellect, reason is the assumed arbiter of every question; in Spirit, intuition and inspiration bring the quick and sure answers to all the problems of life.
We live in very trying and challenging times learning to navigate levels of conflict and dissension that we have not truly heretofore experienced. It is clear to me as we engage life in these times that Wisdom is a much-needed spiritual power to activate in everyday life. We engage our lives body, mind and Spirit and all three are part of this process of “getting wisdom” to be an integral part of our lives. With practice we come to rely on our spiritual intuition, to listen to how our body responds to what we experience. Wisdom is located in the solar plexus, right above the naval. It is our “gut feeling” that tells us what is true in Spirit and what is not. It is the energy that integrates what our mind knows with what our heart feels. It is the spiritual Power of Wisdom, which in Christianity became the Holy Spirit, a masculine energy.
I want to leave you with some wise counsel from Rev. Scott Awbrey, a CSL minister who brings together much of what is in the Spiritual Passages that I share each Sunday. He writes:
Be intentional with the energy and information you absorb. Guard your attention. The mind, like the soul, needs nourishment. Choose wisdom over noise, truth over drama. Read with discernment. Listen with intention. Let your heart, not the headlines, set your course. “Whatever is true, whatever is noble - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8).
Hear the news like you're hearing a prayer request. Come home to what you can touch. Tend to your soul. Love your people. Reach toward those in need. Speak your truth with kindness. Find God in laughter, in beauty, in small acts of courage. These are not distractions from the world’s pain. They are the healing of it. As Emilie Cady taught, “There is nothing in all the universe for you to fear, for greater is that which is in you than that which is in the world.”
Let the feminine Wisdom of Sophia and the masculine wisdom of Holy Spirit be alive in you in each and every moment; moment by moment of every day! May it be so!
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis