Despising wisdom – Devotion for
Sometimes I can’t stand it when someone gives me advice. The reason is sometimes that advice flies completely in the face of what I want to do, but somehow what they are telling me makes sense. Deep down I know what they have told me to do is the right thing to do, but I just don’t want to do it, because I have my heart set on something else . . . plus I still hold out that I’m right. I recall many times going through this sort of thing with my father. Many times he would give me his opinion on something, and that opinion would not agree with my opinion on something. Dad would just say, “Trust me on this, Son. I know what I’m talking about.” However, I just wouldn’t want to listen. And almost every time I later discovered that I should have listened to him. So why is it that sometimes we despise wisdom? Why is it that we still want to hold fast to our ideas even when someone presents a wiser idea?
In Ecclesiastes 9:13-18 we read about wisdom. The passage references a small city that a great king came and surrounded with his men and large siegeworks. Inside the city was a poor but wise man, and this poor wise man delivered the city by his wisdom. Somehow, according to the passage, even though he delivered the city, “wisdom of the poor man is despised and his words are not heeded” (Ecclesiastes 9:16b). So we have the proverb, “Wisdom is better than strength” from Ecclesiastes 9:16a (sounds kinda like a fortune cookie, doesn’t it?).
I think that a majority of the time when we hear true wisdom we know it, yet we will still resist it. I see it in my sons, who want to argue with me even when I know I am giving them good advice. I see it in myself, when I still get those words of wisdom from my father that I have to learn the hard way that he was right. Today, if you hear those words that you want to despise and defy, recognize that God is the giver of wisdom, and those words we despise and oppose may have come from God.
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