Skip to main content

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards In Plain English. (#1-10)

Jonathan Edwards is known as one of the greatest and most profound of American theologians. His writings have benefited many Christians throughout the years. I was impressed with these resolutions and so I have attempted to translate them into the language of the day. I understand that I may have missed Edward’s full meaning at some level, but I made every attempt to capture the essence of the original author and summarize in such a way as to benefit the modern reader. There are 70 resolutions in all. I have summarized the first ten here. I hope you enjoy these. ________________________________ 1. Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God's glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriad's of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I mee...
4 comments
Read entire article

My Chiropractic Dilemma

So, I've had this back/neck/shoulder pain for two weeks now. It was getting so bad that I was really at the point of doing anything to get rid of the pain. Everybody kept telling me to go to the Chiropractor. I've actually only spoken to one person who has ever told me anything negative about their experience with Chiropractic treatment. Most people are convinced that it is helpful. A little history. About a year ago, I went to a Chiropractor here in town who was recommended by a friend. She told me that I could get a free exam and x-rays with a referral. Well, I figured if it was free how bad could it be. I was skeptical at that point. I do not like to be deceived, and from the things I was reading, Chiropractic treatment was pseudo-science and mostly "smoke and mirrors." I was in pretty severe lower-back pain at that time and figured I'd go ahead and give 'em a try and see what it was all about. I won't go into the whole story, but to sum it up, I was ...
2 comments
Read entire article

The Bible on Entertainment - PART 7 The Philippians 4:8 Filter

As we began this look at the subject of entertainment, I said that the key verse for this study would be: 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 “Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.” The articles that I have written up to this point have been concentrating on the last part of that verse, ( Avoid…evil ). The reason for this is because I believe we are surrounded and bombarded with worldly entertainment that is numbing us to immorality. You may have noticed that there are more and more “reality” type shows that encourage us to become addicted. Video games are designed to be addictive and music, by its very nature is addictive. I’ve already said that I don’t believe that all entertainment is sin, but I do believe that it’s time Christians took a fresh look at the entertainment we consume and put all of it to the test of scripture. This final “filter” that we will look at today is, I believe, the best way to evaluate entertainment. It’s almost as if this was put in the bible ...
4 comments
Read entire article