Ez 2:8-3:4 / Mt 18:1-5,10,12-14
Have you ever thought how much time it takes to train someone to enter one of the professions? Year after year of study: kindergarten, grammar school, high school, college, graduate school, and more often than not, internship after all that. A fortune in time, and a fortune in money. And at the end of it all, a vast array of knowledge and skills, but only rarely any wisdom.
Wisdom is bought with coin of a different sort, and only very slowly.
The process of acquiring it is mysterious. The mere reading of books will not suffice, nor will years on the job by themselves guarantee its becoming ours. So it should be no surprise to find God commanding Ezechiel to take desperate measures, to eat the scroll which contained the words of God’s wisdom in hopes of becoming what he has eaten.
Eating wisdom texts isn’t really an option, but it does give us a clue as to how we are to become wise. Our minds and hearts have to be so assimilated to the Lord and become so at one with him that we see the world as he sees it and love it as he loves it. No matter what our education, that kind of inner transformation will come only to those who have learned to listen with open hearts.
It’s THE key, the ONLY key, to wisdom: Listening with an open heart.
