We’ve titled this worship series “Uncommon Wisdom” because we feel that these scripture lessons invite us to a less popular and underappreciated way of using scripture to look at the world around us. In a society whose only real success strategies appear to be exploitation, violence, and smear campaigns, these verses will show us another path to the good life. These passages might comfort or challenge us in strange ways that we haven’t necessarily come to expect from biblical texts. There’s nothing particularly Israelite in most of this literature, and two of the three books we will encounter don’t even mention God. We hope you will put in the extra work to understand these texts and challenge yourself and your hearers to let them speak truth to the realities of today.