We all go somewhere, don’t we? We turn to celebrities and TV personalities, political figures and even sports figures! I remember a day when Dear Abby columns were in newsprint across the country. It is amazing how many questions she fielded through the years.
Cindy and I like PF Chang’s. We love the lettuce wraps and never fail to read our fortune cookies. It’s fun, sometimes timely.
Where do you go for wisdom?
There are the usual suspects — a parent or grandparent, a friend or mentor.
One place to go for wisdom is to the generation(s) before us. I think about those in our church family who are our elders—the Aunt Margarettes and Mr. Roberts of Mt. Carmel. I’m sure you can name a few in your own circle of influence. It raises a couple of obvious questions:
• Why do younger generations not ask older people about life?
• Why do we tend to push them aside in our haste to assume leadership?
We all know people who have something to say to us — words that come from experience. Who do you go to for words of wisdom?
The Bible has been the source for many people of faith. Now be sure here. It’s one thing to say it, another to handle it and read it carefully.
It helps me to approach the Bible as a community library. Take the books of Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes — picture these books in the section marked “wisdom literature.” They give instruction about how to live a good life.
When life is normal (Proverbs), when life gets stuck (Ecclesiastes), and even when life gets off track or just plain abnormal (Job) — these books speak words of wisdom, sometimes to one another, and always to the reader.
They join various observations about how the world works into a view of the world that incorporates faith in God with advice about how to live the best possible life. These writers believe that God is responsible for the patterns of life they see. They discern a God-given order to the world that He created.
While these writings recognize the world as an uncertain and, sometimes, ambiguous place, they insist that God loves the world and remains faithfully related to it. This is the wisdom inspired by God — recognized by the church — canonized as trustworthy.
The older I get, the more I depend on it. It’s where we should go for wisdom!
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