200: adquiere sabiduria

Quick thought: God highly values wisdom.

Oddly enough, it took reading Proverbs 4 in Spanish to get this through my head.

"Sabiduria ante todo; adquiere sabiduria;
Y sobre todas tus posesiones adquiere inteligencia." -Proverbs 4:7

"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding." KJV

Or, my translation of the Spanish: "Wisdom before everything; acquire wisdom; and over and above all your possessions, acquire intelligence." (kind of a shocker)

Then in Proverbs 8, Lady Wisdom of course has her great soliloquy:

"The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way,
Before his works of old.
I have been established from everlasting,
From the beginning,
before there was ever an earth." (vv 22-23, NKJV)

Wisdom is such an intangible quality, I think. And this is a quick thought blog post, not a study, because I haven't recently done a study on wisdom, though I'm sure I did in my homeschooling days with my mom, because, well, wisdom was a big thing back when we were reading a Proverb every day and reading books like Wisdom with the Millers and Pearables.

Sometimes wisdom can seem like a suggestion. I mean, it's not as if it's a command of "do this." Well, okay, maybe it does say to "get wisdom," but that can feel more like a wise saying.

What I'm saying is sometimes having wisdom can feel very much like a general exhortation with little specifics tacked onto it.

So when Ephesians 5:4 says that there should be no foolish talk, I'm left thinking, Really? Is this truly a command? What does foolish talk consist of? Because I'm not sure I regularly check that part of my speech. (I mean, it also says no crude joking, but I come from a loud and proud heritage of, well, *coughs*, flatulence jokes. So is that ok?)

Ok, I've got to wrap this up. My thought is that foolishness is the opposite of wisdom. And God seems to highly value wisdom. And if God highly values wisdom, then so should I.

So if something is "foolish" or "ill-advised," I need to stop seeing that as a not-so-great-choice-but-not-necessarily-sin, and start discerning if it is the opposite of wisdom. If so, it is the opposite of what God values. And if I'm a member of the Kingdom of God, it is not only ill-advised, it is not the kingdom way. Walking wisely is how God's people walk.

"Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil." (Eph. 5:15-16, ESV)