Does not wisdom call?
Does not understanding raise her voice?
2 On the heights beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3 beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud:
4 “To you, O men, I call,
and my cry is to the children of man.
22 “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old.
23 Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
26 before he had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world.
27 When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
28 when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
29 when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
30 then I was beside him, like a master workman,
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
31 rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the children of man.
A little while ago the scientists who study such things announced that they had a picture of the black hole which sits at the center of our galaxy. It is a supermassive object whose gravity affects even our star, some 27,000 light years away. That is an unimaginably large distance. When we think of such things, we can feel like insignificant motes in this vast universe. Our galaxy is not even a large one by comparison with some others. Our sun is just average.
Yet, all these things are small in the hands of the God who made us. The proverbialist today speaks of God’s wisdom, His plan or insight which he brought into being before the creation of the cosmos. His mind has conceived all the things that scientists discover and far more which they have not even begun to think about.
But notice the last line of this section of Proverbs. God’s wisdom, this first creation which stood at the very center of the creative act, rejoiced in the inhabited world, delighted in the children of men. You are not a mote in the vast universe, inconsequential and powerless. You are the delight of God’s wisdom because God has taken up to Himself your nature. When Jesus was born in a manger and ran the human race with us, our humanity took on a cosmically significant meaning. The Wisdom of God stood at his side like a master workman. In Christ, you are even closer.