James 1:5
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him.
In his wonderful little story The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis takes us on a bus ride from Hell to Heaven where damned souls are offered the opportunity, if they will only take it, of remaining in Heaven and not going back to Hell. One of the ghosts from Hell is a tough-talking old salt who keeps insisting on his “rights” and who constantly complains that he's just an ordinary man who believes in pulling himself up by his bootstraps. He is met by a Blessed Soul from Deep Heaven who has been sent to try to convince him to stay in Heaven. But the ghost from Hell is too obsessed with his “rights” to care about such a wonderful offer. At length, he ends a long diatribe about his self-sufficiency by exclaiming, “I'm not asking for any bleeding charity!” To which the glorified saint replies, “Then do! At once! Ask for the Bleeding Charity!” Today's verse makes the exact same point. We don't have to be tough guys and gals and work our way into God's good graces before he will reveal his wisdom to us. We don't have to appease our intellectual pride before coming to God like a child. We merely have to ask for wisdom and Jesus, in his Bleeding Charity, will give it.
