"Wisdom Has Prepared A Great Banquet"

Scripture Passage

Proverbs 8:1-10:32

Scripture Focus

Instruct the wise,
     and they will be even wiser.
Teach the righteous,
     and they will learn even more
                   (Proverbs 9:9 NLT)

Observation

Pretty simple thought this morning: Some people just refuse to learn. To their own detriment, some refuse to be open to something other than what they are so sure is just so…to consider possibilities they’ve not considered before.

Why is that? My first thought is arrogance—but that’s a really strong, distasteful word. Still, we’ve all seen it, and probably all been there at some point in some way—so convinced and assured of “rightness” that we were absolutely unwilling to consider that there might be more information (or wisdom) available than we’d fully tapped into.

I heard a fellow speak the other day to the issue of problem solving. He suggested that when you’ve got a problem to solve, you don’t need to generate one idea for how to address it; you need to generate a hundred! After you’ve generated a hundred possibilities, you’re ready to sort through the possibilities and whittle it back down to two or three that might be usable. It’s the openness to—the genuine consideration of—multiple possibilities that ultimately leads to the right solution.

I understand the value of confidence in “what you think you know”. I understand how threatening it can feel to acknowledge the possibility that something might be different than what you’ve always thought or believed it to be. I also understand that Wisdom “has prepared a great banquet” (Proverbs 9:2 NLT). (I like that—I think I’ll write that again. “Wisdom has prepared a great banquet.”) In today’s Scripture focus—the wise and the righteous are not those who are convinced they know it all, but rather those who will sit down to the feast and be fed—those who are willing to be taught and to learn. That’s a table at which I want to sit!