“Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter” Ecclesiastes 7:12
Rumor has it that Walt Disney had his body frozen in hopes of being resuscitated at later date. CRYOGENICS offers the elderly and terminally ill the chance to freeze their body in the hopes of coming back to life in the future. Advocates believe that scientists will one day work out how to warm the bodies up and bring them back to life, by which time doctors might be able to cure cancer and other diseases which are untreatable today. It’s very expensive. But, hey, what’s eternal life worth?
But, doctors don’t have the knowledge required to reanimate a frozen corpse.
Solomon is literally saying, “in the shade is knowledge, in the shade is money”; “כִּ֛י בְּצֵ֥ל הַֽחָכְמָ֖ה בְּצֵ֣ל הַכָּ֑סֶף וְיִתְרֹ֣ון דַּ֔עַת הַֽחָכְמָ֖ה תְּחַיֶּ֥ה בְעָלֶֽיהָ׃ For, in the shadow of both, we find shelter and relief. That’s where the similarity ends...
The advantage of knowledge, according to Solomon, is that knowledge preserves the lives of its possessors while wealth may allow us to delay the inevitable but can never preserve our lives. On what basis does Solomon make this claim? Proverbs 1:7 tells us the starting point from which all wisdom derives is “The fear of the Lord”, or the recognition that God is the author, authority and sustainer of all things. Anything we call knowledge that is not built upon this premise is foolishness.
This journey toward true knowledge is described is the fourth chapter of Ephesians; “To each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it...So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
In other words, real knowledge always results in accepting Christ. Some disagree, and occupy their lives with alternative theories regarding the end of life. And, wealth encourages the search for those alternatives...just like it encourages the search for a nicer house, or car, or job, or spouse. It’s what money does; it provides options. God recognizes this and, with the stubborn, He won’t quarrel; As the Apostle Paul says “just as [some] did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.” (Romans 1:28)
Money can offer comfort; heat, air conditioning, food, clothing...even additional days on this earth but...not everlasting life. If we seek relief, there is only one place to begin.
Live boldly out there today...
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