Pilgrim Uniting Church, Adelaide SA SUN 15-AUG-2021 - 11 AM Sermon Rev Dr Greg Elsdon Pentecost 12 – What is wisdom, and how do we get it? It is not knowledge, and it is not information. It comes from a willingness to know ourselves, to plumb the depths and learn to live with ourselves and with others. Solomon, the third king of Israel, was renowned for the extraordinary wisdom which he received as a gift from God at the start of his reign. But he was not the ideal man that the lectionary reading would suggest. He was a deeply flawed, violent, unfaithful despot. He was blessed with wisdom and cursed with foolishness; he was committed to his intellect and shackled to his appetites. It's just too much like our own stories. The seeking of wisdom is a journey to many places, and one of the most important is the discovery of ourselves as both flawed and fabulous, both courageous and coward, sometimes wise and sometimes plain stupid. Yet for all of our ambiguity, we are unconditionally loved by God. 1 Kings 2: 10-12; 3: 3-14 Playing Time   –   21:22