The Library of Wisdom

Get wisdom, get understanding;
don’t forget or turn away from the words from my mouth.
Don’t abandon wisdom, and she will watch over you; love her, and she will guard you.
Wisdom is supreme—so get wisdom.
And whatever else you get, get understanding.
Cherish her, and she will exalt you;
if you embrace her, she will honor you.
She will place a garland of favor on your head;
She will give you a crown of beauty.
(Prov. 4:5–9)

The Al-Qarawiyyin Library in Fez, Morocco, is believed to be the oldest working library in the world.[1] It opened in AD 1359 at the University of Al-Qarawiyyin, which was established in AD 859. The library was the brainchild of Fatima El-Fihri, the daughter of a wealthy Tunisian merchant, clearly a lover of learning, education, and knowledge. Many other ancient libraries lay in ruins, victims of war and time. Yet archaeologists still painstakingly decode knowledge from broken shards of cuneiform tablets, so eager are we to know more about the world in which we live.

Meanwhile, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, stands as one of the world’s largest libraries, with over 173 million pieces catalogued. It’s thrilling for bibliophiles—especially those who cherish print books—to know that there are people preserving culture, heritage, and knowledge of the ages so that we can wander in their stacks, turn to one side or the other, select a tome from the shelves, and sink into a forgotten era and turn the pages of long ago. To learn how people lived and loved, find the ways in which things work, explore the universe and man’s inventions, and read of wars lost and won. To breathe deeply of the aroma of time, paper, history, and age is the fragrance of knowledge and learning.

…the doorway to Wisdom’s house swings open by humility.

The archivists, library scientists, archaeologists, and historians are the silent keepers of the written sum of man’s wisdom, and its breadth and depth can’t be understated. That’s a lot of knowledge and, whether around the corner or around the world, we still turn to these hallowed places seeking knowledge that leads to wisdom. Access to such vast areas of man’s knowledge and wisdom are made even more precious by knowing that interspersed among these dusty tomes, there are many who were actually thinking God’s thoughts about the world He’s created; this is the only way to think clearly about the world in which we live. In other words, women and men throughout history have sought to understand God’s wisdom first, in order to inform their own, and their work has an eternal impact greater than those who started with their own limited understanding.

Despite our best human efforts, the wisdom of God needs an entire universe to express, reflect, and define itself to us; we only know Christ’s world by Christ first teaching us. God drops more knowledge and wisdom into a simple wheat field than the sharpest archivist could ever drop while tripping up the library stairs.

Everything we need to know is in the person of Christ, in Wisdom Himself, since by Wisdom—Christ Himself—the foundation of the earth has been laid. We would do well to spend all we have to acquire Christ’s wisdom, the wisdom that guards, the wisdom that guides, the wisdom that grants us favor and unshakable beauty.

For such knowledge and wisdom, there is only one cost involved: our know-it-all pride, for the doorway to Wisdom’s house swings open by humility.

1. Anna Todd, “You Can Visit the World’s Oldest Library in Fez, Morocco,” August 1, 2019, Discovery, https://www.discovery.com/exploration/Worlds-Oldest-Library-Fez-Morocco.