The RIGHT Way to Go

 

Wednesday, February 15, 2023

My child, listen to what I say, and treasure my commands.  Tune your ears to wisdom, and concentrate on understanding.  Cry out for insight, and ask for understanding.  Search for them as you would for silver; seek them like hidden treasures.  Then you will understand what it means to fear the Lord, and you will gain knowledge of God.  For the Lord grants wisdom!  From his mouth come knowledge and understanding.  He grants a treasure of common sense to the honest.  He is a shield to those who walk with integrity.  He guards the paths of the just and protects those who are faithful to him.  Then you will understand what is right, just, and fair, and you will find the right way to go.  For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will fill you with joy.  Wise choices will watch over you.  Understanding will keep you safe.  Wisdom will save you from evil people, from those whose words are twisted.  These men turn from the right way to walk down dark paths.  They take pleasure in doing wrong, and they enjoy the twisted ways of evil.  Their actions are crooked, and their ways are wrong.  Proverbs 2:1-15

These words, usually accepted as written by Solomon, come from a lifetime of a wise man seeking the right way to live a meaningful life.  Solomon’s methodology was not much different from yours or mine; we learn through trial and error’s school of hard-knocks.  In Ecclesiastes Solomon wrote:

So I set out to learn everything from wisdom to madness and folly. But I learned firsthand that pursuing all this is like chasing the wind.  Ecclesiastes 1:17

Here was a wise man who wanted to investigate every part of how people live on this planet.  What he found was most of it is empty, like a dog chasing his own tail…an overly-glorified exercise in passing the time.

Yet, in this morning’s text, Solomon’s Proverb, instructs his own son to spend his life absorbing wisdom, to chase understanding like the brass ring on the merry-go-round.  And, of course, he’s pointing to God’s commands, the words of life, which will teach his heart, soul, and mind all it needs to know so he will know how to fear (reverence) the Lord. 

At the last of his instructions, Solomon reveals the purpose of it all, keeping on the right path in this world’s quagmire of cultural madness.  The wisest of men points to the craziest of human mayhem, and gives his son the key to living a life that will not leave him ashamed at the end; he points his child to serving God’s light in the midst of a great darkness.  No matter what crooked, twisted ways of evil present themselves, one who trusts in God can walk confidently in the Lord’s care and love.

Perhaps Solomon was well beyond his time, knowing what the madness of 21^st century earth would be like, pandemics, violence, earthquakes, scams, political havoc, crumbling families, and news cycles that never make genuine sense.

For You Today  

The choices are endless.  Among them, you can follow the news on CNN, Twitter, FOX, or whatever other cultural high makes you too buzzed to see clearly…or tune-in to God’s wisdom and light.  It all depends on whether you want to have your eyes open to eternity’s understanding.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Finding Wisdom  and  A Treasure of Common Sense 

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Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©