As I write these words, this second day of autumn, I look at the land changing around me.  I see leaves turning, flowers shriveling, and innumerable squirrels stashing away food for the winter.  Sights of autumn.  One squirrel in particular caught my eye today.  As I typed, he boldly scampered up to a chair near me, clambered up it and, taking another step, leaped onto a bush.  He had a massive hickory seed in his mouth.  Moving slowly across the surface of the bush (a yew) for a few seconds, he then stopped and thrust the nut into the bush.  Come cold weather, he will no doubt return for it, and enjoy a scrumptious feast, sort of like some of us enjoying a bowl of warm chili on a frigid winter night.
     Though many of us who live in the northern climes may lament the appearance of winter, the animals take it in stride.  Somehow, some way, they know exactly what to do--and when to do it.  Their timing is always perfect.  Ours is not nearly so much.  We must use artificial means to determine when to prepare; animals know without thinking about it.
     In his first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul ruminates on the wisdom of God. God's wisdom, he says, may well seem to many of us counterintuitive, as if someone as intelligent as God could or should have done things differently.  On the other hand, we can look at what seems odd as instead a picture of irony.  How funny is it that we homo sapiens, beings who possess the finest tools of meteorological prediction, tools which get better and better every year, still cannot surpass the ability of our animal friends to know, intimately, the precise rhythms of the seasons.
     Our world, God's enduring surprise to us, and you and me, never wiser than wisdom itself.
     Indeed.  Maybe that's why so many of us stumble over God's ultimate picture of wisdom:  Jesus Christ.