Proverbs 1:23: Nine times nine

[Wisdom says:] “If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you.”
-Proverbs 1:23

I am surrounded, more and more, by a world that does not know the multiplication tables. Especially now, with the state of American schools, fewer people are even considering this information, fewer people will admit it worthwhile, and fewer people can really multiply nine and nine and get eighty-one without a calculator.

If you’re wondering, I did not use a calculator for that one, but maybe I should . . . Yep, I was right the first time.

If you go around to the people you know, chances are that many of them will have no clue when it comes to mathematics. Many of them will just have a blank look on their faces when you start talking about the multiplication tables.

Doesn’t mean they aren’t true.

Anyone can grab a handful of rocks and work out these tables for their own, making nine little piles of nine rocks each and then counting eighty-one rocks. Any fool can do this. And yet it is so telling that I’ve heard some mathematicians are now questioning the meaning of ONE.

There are absolute truths in this universe of a higher order than ONE. There is wisdom beyond that which a normal man on the street will admit to. There are those who will tell you there is no truth, that nothing is good or evil, that there is no God. But then there are people who do not understand nine times nine, but that doesn’t change the answer away from eighty-one.

In one of my favorite episodes of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, Picard is tortured for an extended period. One of the things the Cardassians do to him is to shine four lights in his eyes and tell him there are five lights. They promise him freedom, food, whatever, if he will just admit there are five lights.

But there were four lights. In just the same way, the evidence of God is all about us, from the way we are fearfully and wonderfully made to the precise balance of the universe to the moral law inscribed within us to love, to love, to love.

Wisdom cries out in the street, and she cries out the name of Christ Jesus, the evidence of a love beyond any other we could ever know. While we were sinning, while we were in rebellion, God sent His Son to save us. Jesus died for us, paying the price for our sin upon the Cross.

It is true, more true than nine times nine being eighty-one. If you repent of your old ways and fall at His feet for mercy, you will find it. Ask Him for His forgiveness and walk in His ways, and you will find love and wisdom as you have never before known.