Read
Wisdom Gives a Feast
1Wisdom has built her house
with its seven columns.
2She has prepared the meat
and set out the wine.
Her feast is ready.
3She has sent her servant women
to announce her invitation
from the highest hills:
4“Everyone who is ignorant
or foolish is invited!
5All of you are welcome
to my meat and wine.
6If you want to live,
give up your foolishness
and let understanding
guide your steps.”
True Wisdom
7Correct a worthless bragger,
and all you will get
are insults and injuries.
8Any bragger you correct
will only hate you.
But if you correct someone
who has common sense,
you will be loved.
9If you have good sense,
instruction will help you
to have even better sense.
And if you live right,
education will help you
to know even more.
Reflect
The invitation to obtain wisdom is for everyone regardless of their aptitude, skills, knowledge, or position. Wisdom is like a woman who has prepared a feast, and invites everyone who is ignorant or foolish. No one is left out. Everything that God offers is available to us all and his offer is a recurring theme in the Bible. Wisdom is not a simply a collection of wise sayings and actions. It stands on a support structure – pillars on which the wise build their lives.
Godly wisdom is supported by a godly worldview. A worldview is simply the way you view, interpret and respond to the world around you. All worldviews ask similar questions like: “Where did I come from?” “What is wrong with the world?” “How can it be fixed?” How these questions are answered governs our attitudes and behavior toward one another in our immediate space and in the larger venues of community, country and global environment.
Wise people have a God-centred worldview that sees the world as God sees it. The foolish view the world through a different lens.
Consider this. A worldview built on the pillar that holds that human life is created in God’s image and is sacred will result in attitudes toward social conditions and practices that respect life. A worldview that maintains that human life is nothing more than the top of the chain of natural selection over millennia will produce different responses toward people. Having wisdom in God’s eyes is seeing and responding as God would in your world—your marriage, your family, your job, your relationships, your spending, your saving, your recreation; the list goes on.
Wealth and position do not bring wisdom. Wisdom comes by responding to God’s invitation. Anyone can be wise.
Respond
All wise God, I accept your invitation to be wise. Show me the world through your eyes so I may make decisions as you would. I pray that the world around me will be different because of the wisdom I receive from you. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
Ted Seres
Ted Seres received his B.A. in Political Science at McMaster University in Hamilton. He earned an M. Div at the Lutheran Theological Seminary, Saskatoon. He is married to Susan and has two sons: Trenton and Brett. Ted is an ordained minister with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. He has been involved in pastoral ministry including church planting.