Daily Devotions
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Proverbs 8:1, 4, 22, 27-31 – Does not wisdom call? Does not understanding raise her voice? … To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man. … The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His work, the first of His acts of old …. When He established the heavens, I was there; when He drew a circle on the face of the deep, when He made firm the skies above, when He established the fountains of the deep, when He assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside Him, like a master workman, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing before Him always, rejoicing in His inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.
Have you ever looked at an old photo with no label on it, and tried to figure out who that is? Once you knew; but now you look at the clothing, the face, the hair, and try to trace his identity. Is it a classmate? A cousin? An old lover whose face looks so familiar?
This chapter of Proverbs gives us a similar puzzle. It describes someone who looks really familiar to us, if we could just put a finger on His identity! Who is this Wisdom that the poem talks about?
Quite a few people have thought it’s a poetic description of Jesus. They say this based on the parts of the poem which speak of Wisdom being “brought forth” before all creation. That sounds a lot like Jesus, the only-begotten Son of the Father, who was not made or created as we are. They also say it because Jesus is called the “wisdom of God” in 1 Corinthians 1, where Paul says, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:23-24).
There are other reasons it sounds like Jesus. Wisdom is there during creation, “like a master workman” with God (Proverbs 8:30b). Doesn’t that sound like the first chapter of John? He tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1, 3).
Wisdom also says, “I was daily His [God’s] delight, rejoicing before Him always, rejoicing in His inhabited world and delighting in the children of man” (Proverbs 8:30b-31).
Now that really sounds like Jesus! Because God the Father loves His Son, and delights in Him daily—we know that from His own words when Jesus was baptized and God the Father said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17b). And we know very well how much Jesus delights in us, the people God made. There is no greater love than His, for when we turned away from God, Jesus suffered, died, and rose to forgive our sins and bring us home again to God.
WE PRAY: Dear Savior, is this Your picture? Because it sure looks like You. Turn me to love You with all my heart, always. Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Kari Vo.
Reflection Questions:
- Do you have any old and unidentifiable photos?
- How do you figure out who those people are?
- If someone asked you to identify Jesus, what words or phrases would you use to describe Him?
Today's Readings:
1 Kings 3-4Proverbs 1
John 19:1-22