Clever or Wise?

Ronald and I had a disagreement today. Now, it wasn’t a set-to or anything serious, just the normal fussing over semantics. His idea of a word’s meaning and appropriate usage often differs greatly from my interpretation.

For instance, when I say exciting, I mean I got a good bargain at Belks. When he says exciting, he’s talking about a baseball game for heaven’s sake! Men! Frustrating and clueless!

We usually have the same opinion about God. Omniscience, Omnipresence, and all the wonderful attributes we can agree on. Our disagreement was all about onions and God’s role in that marvelous vegetable’s origins.

Nerd that I am, I couldn’t help but learn a few facts to add to my side of the argument.

Onions have a long, documented history. From the Bronze Age to now there have been records, pictures, myths, and cultivation of onions. For the ancient Egyptians, the concentric circles symbolized eternity. Greek athletes deemed them necessary for strength and endurance. Soldiers used onions as an antiseptic on the battlefield. Through time and all over the world, onion’s curative properties treated people’s bodies from the head down, inside and out. Modern science has proven many of the folktales and cures as accurate. Interesting, right?

We take for granted the mesh bags of onions stacked high in bins at the supermarket and sold for a mere pittance. In the old days, onions were used to pay workers and even to pay rent! Today, onions are big business. 6.5 billion pounds of onions are grown commercially each year in the United States alone. That’s a gosh awful lot  of onions and doesn’t even consider other countries’ production. Or the backyard garden style onions which caused our disagreement about God.

We were double teaming our onion crop. He was fussing about the skins that clung obstinately not only to the onion but to his hands as he tried to clean the onions for me to slice and chop. Granted, the onions were being stubborn little rascals but as I sliced them, I couldn’t help but marvel at God’s creativity. The lovely rings fit so beautifully without a sliver of space between each row. Unlike some of the other vegetables that  take on unusual and sometimes grotesque shapes, each of the onions was basically well formed and pretty standard in shape.

“Isn’t God so clever?” says I.

“I wouldn’t never categorize God as clever! He’s brilliantly wise!” the old man countered.

The next few minutes were filled with controversy as we each defended our stance. At the end of the confrontation, we were at an impasse. We finally agreed we were both right. (I was more right, of course!)

Just as God made the insignificant onion a thing of beauty and perfection, so He makes each of us into a special being that can feed others with the nutrients of His love and caring that flows in and through the believer.

(My analogy doesn’t fit in with the tears and stinky breath that goes along with the onion. You have to follow my train of thought here, people! The Object Lesson Queen has spoken!)

Anyway. God is clever, and wise, and wonderfully, fascinatingly brilliant! Look to see His creative hand in other things! Then take a minute to praise Him for being the incomprehensible God who loves us!

Blessings

KB

“Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they existed and were created.”  Revelation 4:11 ESV