George Washington Carver and the Wisdom Woven into a Peanut

In 1921, George Washington Carver stood before the United States Congress with a box of peanut products — milk, flour, dyes, wood stains, face cream — over three hundred discoveries drawn from a single humble legume. When a congressman asked how he uncovered so many uses, Carver gave a disarmingly simple answer: "I asked the Creator what the universe was made for. He told me that was too much for my little mind. So I asked Him what a peanut was made for." And then, Carver said, God began showing him — one secret at a time.

Carver spent decades in his tiny laboratory at Tuskegee, Alabama, rising before dawn to walk through fields and woods, listening. He called these walks "appointments with the Creator." He believed that wisdom was not something humans invented but something already embedded in the fabric of creation, waiting to be discovered by anyone humble enough to pay attention.

This is precisely the scene Proverbs 8 paints. Wisdom declares, "I was there when He set the heavens in place, when He marked out the foundations of the earth. I was constantly at His side, filled with delight." Wisdom was not an afterthought. She was the Master Craftsman's companion, woven into every cell and star from the very beginning.

Carver understood what Solomon proclaimed: the God who made the peanut also hid glory inside it. Wisdom is still calling out in the streets, in the fields, in the ordinary — to anyone willing to listen.