I built up this whole thought around the phrase, “the wisdom of God is foolishness to man.” But it turns out, there is no verse that is phrased exactly like that. 1 Corinthians 2:14 comes kind of close but it's not quite the same. Anyway, even if I can't find a scripture that says it in those exact words, I'm going to share the thought based on the phrase “the wisdom of God is foolishness to man.” But I don't want to talk about the fact that God’s wisdom may appear foolish to us, but rather that God’s wisdom is so great that He takes our foolishness into account. It is not so much that God is such a wise and brilliant planner that He can figure out a way to get us back on track when we have foolishly wandered off, but that our final glory and exaltation has our foolishness baked into the plan from the get go. Think about the Fall. God created Adam and Eve in such a way that because of the ease and perfection of their surroundings in the Garden of Eden, they could not learn or grow or fulfill the measure of their creation to multiply and replenish the earth. But God also placed the forbidden fruit within easy reach and allowed the serpent to go trick Adam and Eve into transgressing against His commandment. The whole Plan of Salvation could only begin because God planned for Adam and Eve’s foolishness in being persuaded to break God's one rule in the Garden of Eden. We can find countless other examples in the Scriptures where God knew that His children would act foolishly and He worked that into His plans to accomplish something even greater than would have been possible if they had only been wise. There are perhaps hundreds of prophets that have preached to wicked cities to repent or they would be destroyed. But Jonah stands out, not because he did the wise thing and immediately obeyed, but because he foolishly tried to run and ended up in the belly of the whale for three days. Joseph's brothers were being pretty foolish when they sold him into slavery, and Potiphar’s wife was foolish for attempting to seduce Joseph, and Potiphar was foolish for throwing him in prison, and the butler was foolish for forgetting his promise to help Joseph get out of prison, but all of these foolish acts were already planned for by the Lord so that Joseph was exactly where he needed to be to become the second most powerful person in Egypt. I'm not saying that we should just be foolish all of the time, but what I am saying is that we need to stop beating ourselves up when we make foolish choices. Regret would have us believe that if only we had been wiser in this or that moment, then our lives could be so much better now. But that's just not true. Yes, being foolish usually brings us pain and sorrow and may divert or delay or even extinguish certain plans or goals that we had. But that pain and sorrow that comes from such failures can open our hearts and minds to receive wisdom from the Lord and make us more prepared and willing to follow the path He has set out for us. As long as we keep repenting and returning to the Lord, we will not have frustrated or ruined God's plan for us. When we finally make it back home and look back, we will realize that we managed to take the only path that could have possibly brought us back to our Heavenly Father. We will see that God in His infinite wisdom managed to take every single one of our foolish actions into account and still make something truly beautiful of our lives.
