“A Word of Warning, A Call to Soul” Wisdom of Solomon 1:16—2:11, 21–24”

Originally published: May 13, 2025

Today’s passage from the Wisdom of Solomon is resting heavy on my heart. It reads like a whisper from the ancient world into our own, and yet it thunders with startling clarity:
“Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us…”

In recent days, as I’ve sat with scripture in the light of our own nation’s unrest, I feel as though Wisdom herself is offering us a word—not just of warning, but of urgent wakefulness.

This sacred text, written by a Jewish sage in a time of moral compromise and cultural erosion, speaks to a people under pressure. The righteous are mocked. The just are persecuted. Pleasure and profit take precedence over character and care. And the soul? Dismissed as myth or weakness.
Sound familiar?

The Wisdom writer describes a world where the righteous are hated—not for wrongdoing, but for being a mirror. Their very lives shine light on injustice, and that light becomes unbearable for those determined to remain in shadow.
“He calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father… Let us see if his words are true.”

This isn’t just about ancient times. This is about us.

We are living in a time where speaking truth is dangerous, where compassion is political, where justice is delayed or denied because it inconveniences those in power. We see teachers silenced, prophets mocked, journalists demonized, and people of faith pushed to choose between allegiance to the Gospel and allegiance to empire.
There is a spiritual sickness that sets in when a society begins to believe that life is meaningless, that there is no accountability, no eternity, no soul. When this takes hold, nothing is sacred, not the earth, not the child, not the immigrant, not the neighbor. It leads to a culture of disposal, distraction, and division. And perhaps most frightening of all—it leads us to believe that this is normal.
But Wisdom cries out:
“God created us for incorruption and made us in the image of his own eternity.”

You, beloved, were made for more than this. We all were. The soul within us breathed into being by the very Spirit of God—still knows the truth, even when the world forgets.

We are not called to mirror the madness of the moment, but to embody the eternal. We are not here to fit in, but to stand out as signs of God’s justice, love, and mercy even when that makes us inconvenient.

So let us be righteous not in arrogance, but in grace. Let us be inconvenient in our compassion. Let us be unwavering in our commitment to the Gospel, even when the world scoffs.
Because in the end, it is not power, politics, or profit that endures.
It is the soul.
And Wisdom is calling us home.