I had a delightful meal at one of my favorite restaurants last night. Back home, emptying my pockets I discovered my credit card was missing. It hadn’t been stolen; I had just left my brain and my plastic behind at the restaurant. As I drove back to retrieve the orphaned card, I began thinking about […]
The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied. —Proverbs 13:4 John Erskine’s music teacher counseled him to grab a few minutes of practice whenever he could, rather than waiting for big
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A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy man keeps a secret. —Proverbs 11:13 Gossip is a sweet treat that is hard to resist: “Gossip is so tasty! How we love to swallow it! (Prov. 26:22 TEV). That’s too bad, because its aftertaste is fractured relationships: “a
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. —Proverbs 11:2 At the time of this writing, the public’s assessment of the U.S. Congress is at an all-time low—a negative 95%. You would think that politicians with a dismal 5% approval rating would hide. Instead, they
If you are wise, your wisdom will reward you; if you are a mocker, you alone will suffer. —Proverbs 9:12 Punctuating thought and speech with negative “ifs” will dump you in the company of losers: If the teacher hadn’t had it
Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. —Proverbs 4:23 Your heart is the size of your fist, weighs only a half-pound, pumps five quarts of blood a minute, and beats 37 million times a year. It’s a vital part of your physical equipment; if it malfunctions you’re in
Blessed is the man who finds wisdom. —Proverbs 3:13 Not all wisdom is cut from the same cloth. There’s a worldly wisdom that is driven by envy and selfishness. “Such ‘wisdom’ … is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.” It bears the fruit of “disorder
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Lean not on your own understanding. —Proverbs 3:5 It isn’t easy to trust God when you’re neck-deep in problems you don’t understand. But that’s what trust is—confidence in God, not in your own understanding. Trust is certainty that God is in control when it
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Fools despise wisdom and discipline. —Proverbs 1:7 Only once in the Bible God called a man a fool (Lk. 12:20). But there are many references to the traits of fools. Some refer to disposition: Quarrelsome: “every fool is quick to quarrel” (Prov. 20:3). Angry: “A
He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. —Psalm 147:4 If astronomers’ calculations are correct, there are more than 100 billion galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. Our own Solar System, just one member of the Milky Way galaxy, has 200 to
