Wisdom by Faith

     Some wisdom, gleaned from another's personal experience, can only be received by faith. Soon, for example, it will be time to teach my child to drive a car. When I learned to drive we were told to look out over the hood, line the hood ornament up with the white line on the opposite side of the lane. If you did that, you would be driving down the center of your lane. After years of driving you just get
 a sense of where you are in the lane but that came from years of driving with the hood ornament lined up to the opposite side of the road. Now to pass down my wisdom of the hood ornament alignment my son will have to imagine a hood ornament centered out on the far front end of the hood. I will tell him to line that imaginary object up with the white line (or imaginary white line) on the opposite side of the lane. He will ask what a hood ornament looks like. I will tell them how cool hood ornaments were; they were eagles or golf balls or rockets or angels. They were a way to personalize our vehicles. Hood ornaments were cool and they were how our parents taught us drive in our own lane. When he goes to teach his children about hood ornaments, if the fine art of centering your vehicle in your own lane is not to be lost, he will be teaching something to his children he has never really seen but only took on faith from the wisdom of his parent. And so it will go from one generation to the next-- passing on this wisdom by faith.
    This is why God gave us his Word. Eventually the purpose and meaning of the hood ornament may be lost and new ways to teach lane centering may be invented but God knew he didn't want the wisdom of the faithful to be lost. Their stories were the first to be put into print and published so that we would never forget them and though we did not experience it with them or talk to the people who knew those who did, we would still be able to know their wisdom if we accepted their stories by faith-- their wisdom, handed down to us from one generation to the next, by faith.