I see the 7-year-old girl crying hysterically as she runs away from the young guy that squirted her with a water gun. Months ago, she saw real soldiers pointing real guns at her family as they fled from a war that took everything from them.

I see the military wife, struggling to put her emotions into words as I ask, “How are you”? Her eyes hold loneliness, fear, survival, courage and neediness as she opens her mouth to share her story.  

I see the soldier with one leg, shoulders slumped and head hanging low as he awaits his train at the station. Few can imagine what is running through the young man’s mind.

I see the dark skeleton of a house that suffered from shelling; walls engulfed by flames and blackened by fire - transforming the life that used to flourish there into a heap of ashes. 

And as explosions continue overhead and cities turn to dust in the East; I cry and call and wait. I’m in need; in need of wisdom, deep and profound. Wisdom that would pick up my broken pieces and shed light on the darkness. Wisdom that would take the pain and replace it with hope; take the cries and replace them with laughter, take the grief and replace it with joy. 

I feel strangely connected with Job. ““How I long for the months gone by, for the days when God watched over me, when his lamp shone on my head and by his light I walked through darkness! Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God’s intimate friendship blessed my house, when the Almighty was still with me...” Job 29: 2-5 

Yet his story doesn’t end there. He soon shuts his mouth and listens. 

Listens to God, the Creator of the Universe, speak.  

And that’s where the wisdom starts. 

So I close my mouth, read the wisdom literature, and listen. 

For, even when the world around me changes with whirlwind-force; 

God doesn’t. 

His word doesn’t. 

His promises don’t. 

He is the ever-present source of wisdom that my soul so desperately needs.