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 21st century earth would be like,
pandemics, violence, earthquakes, scams, political havoc, crumbling families,
and news cycles that never make genuine sense.
For You Today
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
Images: Title Pixabay.com Images without citation are either personal
property of the author, or in public domain.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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