Monday, May 01, 2006

Proverbs 1:24-27 Consequences of Rejecting Wisdom

Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.

First, it is important to distinguish that, while God is the author of wisdom and is all wise, this is not God speaking through God's voice. This is wisdom speaking. It is an important distinction. While God appreciates the irony of our rebellion, it does not delight Him, but grieves Him. Wisdom's laughter is the impersonal and inherent humor of poetic justice.

When Haaman is hung in the gallows he built for Mordecai in the book of Esther, that same instinct that cheers for the Roadrunner in the cartoons and laughs at the Coyote kicks in. Wisdom sees the intrinsic dark and tragic humor of what transpires.

Specifically, here is a know-it-all who refuses all the overtures of truth and discretion. He will not listen to advice; he scoffs at learning from the experiences of others; he is offended by correction; he is haughty, proud, and self-assured.

He struts out of life's classroom and immediately falls in a hole that he was warned would be there.

That is funny is a sad sort of way.

God is weeping; wisdom is laughing. God sees the irony; wisdom sees the tragedy. God keeps loving this wayward one and wisdom keeps reaching out, hoping that he will have learned to laugh at himself as well and listen the next time.

If he is wise or at least wiser, he will be laughing harder than anyone - though he be bruised and torn and weeping with God.

We need to learn from our mistakes. When we do, we truly learn and are better prepared to be the subject of our own victory stories rather than the brunt of our own jokes.

1 comment:

Oberon said...

.......what is the most important thing?