Proverbs 1.

For the next 31 days, I’m going to write about Proverbs. Once a morning, I’ll share an idea about each chapter. They will be short and simple. And they start today.

Proverbs 1.

This will sound weird, but the best things I’ve ever written I don’t remember writing.

Reading through some post or page, the words jumbled into sentences don’t feel like me. There’s not a gingerbread trail of memory that leads me back to a moment when I thought something and committed it to paper.

Even if you’re not a writer, you’ve had a moment like that. Something has happened that you reacted to in an unusual way. Someone hurt you and you were swift to forgive. Someone wronged you and you looked the other way. Some opportunity presented itself and you grabbed it without fear.

You did the unexpected.

For years I didn’t have a name for it, but reading through Proverbs 1, the answer seems clear.

Wisdom.

It’s overwhelming how available it is.

In Proverbs 1:20-23 we are told.

20Wisdom calls aloud in the street,

she raises her voice in the public squares;

21at the head of the noisy streets she cries out,

in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:

22“How long will you simple ones love your simple ways?

How long will mockers delight in mockery

and fools hate knowledge?

23If you had responded to my rebuke,

I would have poured out my heart to you

and made my thoughts known to you.

 

Wisdom does not whisper.

She calls aloud.

She raises her voice.

She cries out.

She makes her speech.

And wisdom is not doled out.

Wisdom is poured out.

In volumes we cannot fathom, with generosity we can barely grasp.

Her heart and thoughts are available.

May the year 2013 be one in which you stop and listen in the noisy streets to a voice crying out.