After describing our responses toward her efforts to help us (:22-25), God’s Wisdom, personified as a Lady, tells us how she’ll respond when things go terribly wrong in our world — “when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you.”
This sound like a terrible time, a time when we need God most. Yet these verses suggest that our turning to God at that point for His wisdom is just a little late.
Wisdom actually says in these verses that her response at that time will be to “laugh at your disaster” and “mock when calamity overtakes you.” Now, she doesn’t say she’ll bring disaster on us, but she does indicate that when it does come (because we refused to listen to her), she’ll let us live with the consequences.
Wisdom chooses to give us the same treatment we gave her. It’s like that well-known wise saying – live by the sword, die by the sword (actually based on what Jesus said in Matthew 26:52).
This sounds really harsh and not what we would expect from God. But there’s a actually an important message here.
As we go through our daily routines and deal with the everyday issues of life, there may be a tendency to figure I can handle this stuff and put things on autopilot. I’ll call on God when something really big shows up!
Yet the Bible is very clear that we don’t need God just when things seem out of control. Jesus put it this way, we’re supposed to ask Him even for “our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11).
Until we understand that we need Him and His wisdom every day, we’re just a train-wreck waiting to happen!