Awe and Wonder
Awe and Wonder
After breaking my silence in January with an author update newsletter, I thought I'd return with a more typical newsletter for me. When I last sent out a newsletter, I was working on a series about Proverbs 30 - a less famous chapter than Proverbs 31, but still a beautiful one. I had explored the first half of the chapter thoroughly, but I wanted to wrap up the series with a few thoughts on the second half. This is the poetic and fascinating half!
After Agur introduces the source of wisdom in his long intro to Chapter 30, he starts to share his wisdom in the second half. Just like he uses the limits of human wisdom to reveal who God is (the one who gathers wind in his fists), he continues to explore the mystery of the world around him to find wisdom. He doesn't understand the patterns he sees in the natural world around him—why locusts can march together in lockstep, how fire never consumes enough, how a snake can move across a rock—but his wonder at the world leads him on in his meditations on wisdom.
Wonder can lead us to God. We need knowledge of who he is, of course, but the wisdom books in the Bible are all about navigating that gap where we don’t fully understand. Stop and watch the beaver damming up a rushing stream. Science might tell you the logic behind it, but you lose your sense of wonder at how it happens if you decide you understand it and no longer pay attention to it. You can study aerodynamics and the shape of an eagle wing, but that understanding is not the same as just watching an eagle soar through the sky. So if there are still things out there that are “too wonderful” for us, we feel that sense of awe that reminds us of the awe we feel for God.
Some of the verses I really love in this section are these:
“There are three things that are too wonderful for me,
four that I do not understand:
the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship in the sea,
and the way of a man with a woman.”
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Proverbs 30: 18-19 (NET)
There’s a few obvious things to notice about it. First, it’s one of several “numbered proverbs” in this section. This “three things… no, more than that, four things…” pattern sticks in your head. It makes you stop and try to work out what ties these things together. There are five of these sets in this chapter, and they make this chapter of Proverbs unique.
Second, the grouping of these things together suggests we should compare them. But we can spend a long time meditating on what is similar between these four things.
As the NET Bible notes describe, “It is difficult to know for certain what these four things had in common for the sage. They are all linked by the word “way” (meaning “a course of action”) and by a sense of mystery in each area. Suggestions for the connections between the four include: (1) all four things are hidden from continued observation, for they are in majestic form and then gone; (2) they all have a mysterious means of propulsion or motivation; (3) they all describe the movement of one thing within the sphere or domain of another; or (4) the first three serve as illustrations of the fourth and greatest wonder, which concerns human relationships and is slightly different than the first three.”
I’ve heard people giggle about possible similarities in movement between the items in this list, and sure, that is probably one parallel between the four here. But I’m most drawn to the last suggestion. All four things are strange or mysterious, but the way of a man with is woman is the most mysterious one of all.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by romantic love. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned more of the dark side of it, the dark side fairy-tale princesses don’t seem to experience. But in our cynical world, “mating strategies” and “hormones” and “pheromones” are better explanations than dwelling on the mystery of how at times romance does seem to go right. I’ve felt at times it’s more realistic to lose the romantic streak, but in the end it’s not quite a solution to close my eyes to the beauty that can be found there.
Very often all we see is the brokenness of the world around us, but human relationships (father/child, mother/child, husband/wife) are still used in the Bible to illustrate the even more profound mystery of God and his relationship to us. Losing our sense of wonder at the beauty, at the mystery of goodness, deadens our sense of where God is at work in the world.
Lastly, I think these proverbs show there is still some mystery in life. We don't fully understand everything, and that's the point. Rather than suggesting God should answer all our questions, we can sit in awe of one whose thoughts are far above our own.
Well, those are my last thoughts on Proverbs 30. Thanks for joining me on this journey through Agur's wisdom! This is the last newsletter on Proverbs 30.
Previous newsletters on Proverbs 30:
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