In all things that come upon me I never desire to run around in quest of human wisdom, but I always act with the small power I have on whatever it is, and at the same time leave the whole thing to God.

I could simply copy and paste today’s maxim fifteen to twenty times, foregoing any commentary or reflection. However, that wouldn’t really be me, since I always have an opinion about everything. Plus, there is actually some helpful translation between 6th century Mediterranean and 21st century U.S.A interpretations. Specifically, “human wisdom,” and “leave the whole thing to God.”

First, that pesky human wisdom. For Dorotheos of Gaza, most of the problems in the world can be traced directly to human, or worldly, wisdom. While wisdom occupies the heavy, eternal, and universal realm of God’s divinity, human wisdom is at best an ethereal, transitory, and reductionist shadow of God’s wisdom. Seeking human wisdom is to waste time and energy on worldly, earthly, temporal and incomplete knowledge and understanding that can truly never solve problems of any importance or significance. Only opening oneself to God’s wisdom holds any value. Trusting in the guidance, the influence, the nudging, the humbling, the revelation, and the paradigm-shifting omniscience of God is the way forward, BUT…

Leaving the whole thing to God is not passive, nor evasive. The way God works in the world – wait for it – is through us! Obedience and trust are the hallmarks of reliance on God’s wisdom. God’s wisdom = our marching orders. Dorotheos does not speak much directly to Paul’s metaphor of the body of Christ, mainly due to the fact that it was his lived reality. We are Christ’s eyes, Christ’s hands, Christ’s voice, Christ’s feet. God fulfills God’s will in the world through the constantly evolving and ever-present incarnate body of Christ.

Prior to the birth of the Messiah, people waited on God to enter the human sphere and make all things right. The children of God would be vindicated by their faithfulness and their abject reliance on the might and power of God to destroy evil and teach earthly powers the lesson of their lives. Most waiting was for a fulfillment, a “marked paid” to all the debts of the suffering and oppressed Jewish people.

The birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ created a world-shaking shift. Those passively waiting on God’s judgment and final justice were embraced and included in the will and work of God. As God was manifest in the body of the physical Christ during his lifetime, so God is manifest in the world through time in the spiritual body of Christ, of which we are all individual and interdependent members.

What builds and strengthens your knowledge and understanding of God’s wisdom? How do you see human/worldly wisdom getting in the way of the will and the work of God? Where do you feel located in the body of Christ?