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The Wisdom of Age - Proverbs 1:8-9



Proverbs 1:8-9


"Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching.They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck."

I'll admit that this proverb, while straightforward, is difficult to put into practice. I've noticed that when we are young we tend to feel like our parents don't really understand what we are going through or are slightly or completely out of touch with our culture; and therefore can't really offer us any wisdom or advice. As I've grown older, I can now better understand the true wisdom of this very famous proverb. 


There is a certain wisdom that you receive simply by staying alive and paying attention to the things that go on around you. I call it, "the wisdom of age" or "the wisdom of experience". We are all collecting this wisdom as we grow older and experience more of life. I believe this type of wisdom to be very powerful and should be given high consideration. Our parents will always have more of this type of wisdom than we will, and consequently, we should always have a high level of respect for our parents wisdom. Beyond this, in most cases, our parents have a unique interest in our welfare.

As with all of the proverbs, this is Godly wisdom that is generally true and not an absolute law that is blindly followed. As we all know, our parents are not always right. They are just as capable of wrong belief as any other person, but I've come to learn that we do well to heed the wisdom of God and listen to our parents, even to the point of humbly considering their advice when it seems to be wrong in our view.  This is the difficult part of heeding this proverb. We must trust that God knows what He's talking about here, and not be too quick to dismiss our parents as clueless. This should apply equally to both young and old.

Oh yea!; What's up with the garlands and chains mentioned in verse 9? This is just a word picture to describe something that is extremely desirable. To the young son of the king (the original audience), these items were a symbol of the core desires of honor, respect, status, and accomplishment.

To paraphrase, "Listening to your parent's instruction is wise and will carry you far in life."




Continue to the next post in my Proverbs study.
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