An Adventure in Proverbs - Chapter 8

In this passage, it is Wisdom who is speaking, wisdom that is derived from the Lord.

¹⁷     I love those who love me;
        those who search hard for me will find me.
¹⁸     Riches and honor are the benefit of following me;
        so are lasting wealth and justice.
¹⁹     My reward is better than gold, even the purest gold;
        and my profit is greater than the highest quality silver.
²⁰     I follow the way of right living.
        Follow me along the path to find justice;
²¹     I’m ready to meet those who love me, bestow true riches upon them,
        and fill up their lives until their treasuries overflow.

Wisdom is reminding the reader that having him is far more beneficial than beign wealthy. We've seen this played out time and again in our day through the wonder of modern media. We get to watch daily how fabulously wealthy athletes and celebrities lose everything and make a train wreck of their own lives even though they have piles of money. Whenever I come across such stories I always think to myself "If I had that kind of money, I'd never let myself waste it all like that", but without Wisdom from above, I would. All of us would because that kind of temptation is so strong, so seductive, that it distorts how we see reality.  It becomes impossible to see the world as it really is once you have begun to view it through the prism of incredibly fame and/or fortune. That is, unless you have become wise before that fame or fortune is thrust upon you. 

Very few of the people who read this will become fabulously rich or famous, but the need for Wisdom is still as important, because without it, we will make the same blunders and let our lives slip into meaningless waste.

An Adventure in Proverbs - Chapter 7

After an extremely long hiatus, the adventure in Proverbs is back. I got distracted by a great many other things in my life, but I'm making time to do this again, so here we go with Chapter 7, a brief observation.

1 My son, keep my words
    and store up my commands within you.
² Keep my commands and you will live;
    guard my teachings as the apple of your eye.
³ Bind them on your fingers;
    write them on the tablet of your heart.
⁴ Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
    and to insight, “You are my relative.”

I've been reading the Bible for 25 years now. I'm not an expert by any means, but as I think about all of information, questions, phillosophical meanderings, and life lessons that are contained in the grand story of the scriptures I feel like I've learned one major thing that often goes unnoticed. The guys (and possibly women) who wrote the Bible were every bit as wise and smart as we are. While they didn't know anything about molecular biology or deep space or calculus they were asking the same questions about life that we ask. Their answers, contained all through the Bible, are every bit as profound and satisfying as anything that anyone in our own era has come up with. Therefore we should take the wisdom of the Bible very seriously. Even though many of the folks who wrote down the words were merely nomadic farmers and shepherds, they were deep, thoughtul, wise truth seekers. In fact, because they didn't have all the endless distractions that we have they probably took much more time to consider the main questions of life than we do.

So let's guard those teachings in our heart and take them seriously, because in my experience the wisdom contained inside the Bible makes for great counsel and when put into practice actually works! Imagine that!