Glue, Keys and Horses – Proverbious – Day 42 – Proverbs 8:22-31

Proverbious | David Lindner

The glue that holds everything together. The only real key to success in life. The answer to why your life is such a wreck. The reason you haven’t been able to get all of your life running in the same direction. Why it feels like you have 6 horses pulling you, each in a different direction. (And no it was not intentional to include horses after starting this paragraph with glue…)How many times have you heard those questions? Where do you find all the answers? And no, the answer isn’t Google. And no, I’m not trying to sell you a snuggy. The answer is wisdom.

see, what happens is, we decide we want to be something, in my instance – I wanted to be a worship pastor. So, what did I do? I got myself a very expensive education (I wish I had more wisdom about that choice now…) and some experience. Then I started being a worship pastor and kept learning about how to become a better one. Then I got married, so I’d try to learn how to be a better husband. Then we had kids, so I’d try to learn how to be a better father. If I could draw it for you, it would look like me in the middle and all these paths I start going down, but none of them in the exact same direction. So, there are these forces pulling on my life.

So, we have all these things pulling us in different directions which makes it hard to ever gain any traction in any one way. Just when we get one plate spinning well, another one starts to wobble. So we have to run over to that plate and get it going again. Once we do, another is about to fall. We’re constantly trying to avert disaster instead of trying to move forward.

What is the solution? Should we just drop everything, quit our jobs and families then move into a monastery? What good would that do? All you’ll do is find yourself positioning for best monk. How can I out meditate this Joe Monk? How can I out transcribe Bill Monk, out fast Mike Monk and out-dish wash Franky Monk (Slang for Freddy, short for Frederick). (I have never spent any time in a monastery, so I have no idea what kind of politics are in play there.)

Rather, what I propose is we need to be specialists in wisdom instead of generalists in all of life. I see wisdom as the glue that holds everything together. If we can master the glue, then the glue will help us master everything else. Since everything in this world is built on the foundation of wisdom, then it would stand to reason that if we can master our knowledge of the foundation, then everything built on that foundation will be much more stabile. If we skip past the wisdom part-the foundation part, then the life we build may or may not stand.

Proverbs 8:22-31

The Lord created me [wisdom] as the beginning of his works,
before his deeds of long ago.
From eternity I was appointed,
from the beginning, from before the world existed.
When there were no deep oceans I was born,
when there were no springs overflowing with water;
before the mountains were set in place—
before the hills—I was born,
before he made the earth and its fields,
or the beginning of the dust of the world.
When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he marked out the horizon over the face of the deep,
when he established the clouds above,
when the fountains of the deep grew strong,
when he gave the sea his decree
that the waters should not pass over his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him as a master craftsman,
and I was his delight day by day,
rejoicing before him at all times,
rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth,
and delighting in its people.

You may be thinking to yourself, isn’t Jesus supposed to be the center of our lives, not wisdom? And of course, the answer to that question is yes. To which you might reply, then why are you focusing on wisdom and not Jesus. That answer is a little longer.

Look at the the text and then think about what you know from John 1. “In the beginning was the word. The word was with God, the word was God…All things were created by Him…in Him was life…the word became flesh and took up residence among us.” Doesn’t that sound a lot like this passage of Proverbs? Who do you think created wisdom? To know wisdom is to know the creator, maybe not fully, but to know him. Whether this passage is a direct reference to Jesus I don’t know. What I do know that this wisdom we have been speaking of is very much a part of who Jesus was, how he lived and the example he set for us. I don’t want to say that without a doubt, this passage is talking about Jesus, but I do find the similarity astounding.

So, the glue that holds life together? Wisdom. The key to success in life? Wisdom. The answer to why your life is such a wreck. Not enough wisdom. The reason you haven’t been able to get all of your life running in the same direction. Not enough wisdom. Why it feels like you have 6 horses pulling in all different directions. Not enough wisdom. The more we try to live the Proverbious life, the more we will find the rest of our life coming together.