Instilling Wisdom

The (A)proverbs of Solomon (B)the son of David, king of Israel:
2To know (C)wisdom and instruction,
To discern the sayings of (D)understanding,
3To (E)receive instruction in wise behavior,
(F)Righteousness, justice and equity;
4To give (G)prudence to the naive,
To the youth (H)knowledge and discretion,
5A wise man will hear and (I)increase in learning,
And a (J)man of understanding will acquire wise counsel,
6To understand a proverb and a figure,
The words of the wise and their (K)riddles.
7(L)The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;
Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

This is the very beginning of Proverbs 1. Wisdom is from God. Having wisdom is having the world, if you use it wisely. Being wise and having wisdom do not go hand in hand. You can have all the wisdom of a certain subject and still be clueless. It amazes me that some people are so smart in school, yet have no wisdom on life.

God wants us to be wise in all ways. Most of us are not wise in all ways. We have some things we are pretty stupid about. I am horrible in math but in life, I think I usually have some good sense. I am a reader and I pick up a lot of things by reading them. That helps me know what I should do in situations. Watching the news seems to show mostly people who have no wisdom. And I get emails about people who do stupid things. We laugh at them, but it really is kind of sad.

Wisdom is not something to be taken lightly. Instilling the passion of learning into our children seem to be the hardest task of all. We advise them to do their homework, take notes in class, pay attention to all we tell them and listen to their elders. As parents, we sometimes feel that that is not happening. But in the end, most of our kids seem to finally get it and do well. It's the ones who seem not to care that we worry about the most.