Qu'il la Demande à Dieu — Solomon Asked Before He Pursued

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Ten Rulers of the City

Hughes goes straight from verse 19 to bureaucracy, and he is not being flippant. Solomon's comparison is with ten rulers of the city — the men who held the levers, decided the cases, and issued the permissions. Dix chefs qui sont dans une ville.

And note what the verse claims. Not that wisdom outranks them. That wisdom makes a person stronger than all ten. Not more powerful in their terms — more able to withstand.

Which lands on this household with some precision. A move between countries is largely an encounter with officials. A mairie, a notaire, residency papers, registrations, a hundred forms in a language being learned on the road. Nobody outranks that system. Solomon says wisdom lets you stand up under it.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — The Man Who Had Already Asked

Here is the thing that makes this passage extraordinary, and Hughes points straight at it without quite saying it.

Solomon says I determined to be wise — but this was beyond me. J'ai dit: Je serai sage. Et la sagesse est restée loin de moi.

But this is the same man who, as a young king, was offered anything he wanted and asked for wisdom — and received it. Give Your servant an understanding heart. And God gave it, and remarked that he had not asked for long life or riches.

So we have two testimonies from one life. When he asked, it was given. When he pursued it, it stayed far off.

That is not a contradiction. It is the whole lesson. What arrives as a gift cannot be obtained as an acquisition. The young king held out an empty hand. The old man went after it and found it far off, and exceedingly deep.

The French repeats the word, and the repetition is in the Hebrew too: ce qui est profond, profond, qui peut l'atteindre? Deep, deep — who can reach it? The answer is nobody, by reaching.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Ask, Not Determine

Hughes then does exactly the right thing and puts James beside Solomon. And the two verbs sitting side by side are the sermon.

Solomon: I determined to be wise. James: let him ask. Qu'il la demande à Dieu.

One is a resolution. The other is a request. And one of them works.

And James adds three details worth having:

Who gives to all — à tous. No qualification, no shortlist. Liberally — simplement, the word carries the sense of open-handed, without calculation, not weighing out a measured portion.

And without reproach — sans reproche. The Greek means without upbraiding, without making the asker feel foolish for having to ask. He does not say you should know this by now. Which is the thing most people are actually afraid of when they hesitate to ask.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Where That Verse Sits

One detail Hughes does not mention, and it changes the flavour of James 1:5 entirely. Look at what comes immediately before it.

Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience... If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God.

There is no paragraph break in the argument. James is not offering wisdom in general. He is offering wisdom for the trial he has just described.

Which means the promise is aimed precisely at people in the middle of something they did not choose and cannot see the end of. The wisdom is asked for in the difficulty, and for it.

Bowen said yesterday that the road goes through the midst rather than around. James says: and while you are in the midst, ask — and you will not be made to feel foolish for asking.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Hitting Only the Visible

Hughes quotes two lines about criticism that belong together. I am thankful they don't know how bad I really am. And Swindoll's: give God thanks that people are just hitting the visible, not the whole truth.

That is not self-loathing. It is the cure for being wounded by criticism, and Solomon supplies the same medicine in verses 21 and 22. Do not take to heart everything people say... for many times your own heart has known that you yourself have cursed others.

The remedy is not to deny the charge. It is to remember your own record. A person who knows what is actually in her cannot be very shocked by an outsider's rough estimate of it.

Which is a settled thing in this journal already. Le has never claimed to be a holy woman — only a forgiven one, and she has said so plainly since the beginning. That posture is not humility performed. It is armour. There is very little leverage in criticising someone who has already told the truth about herself.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — What Wisdom Actually Looks Like

Hughes ends by distinguishing knowledge from wisdom, which is right but leaves a question: if wisdom is not information, what is it?

James answers it later in the same letter, and the answer is surprising.

The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.

Not one item on that list is intellectual. Every one of them is a description of how a person behaves toward other people.

Which means the wisdom promised in James 1:5 is not chiefly the ability to make the right decision. It is the character to handle the situation well — including the ten officials, the paperwork, the waiting, and whatever anyone says about you along the way.

And it overlaps almost exactly with a list read here eight days ago. Le fruit de l'Esprit, c'est l'amour, la joie, la paix, la patience, la bonté... Same qualities, from the same source, asked for rather than achieved.