Category: Lessons from the Wise Guy
Trust unto the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your understanding. On all your roads know Him and He will straighten your paths. (Proverbs 3:5, 6)
The wise man instructs his son to trust Yahweh implicitly and entirely, and to resist the urge to place his trust in himself and his own insights.
Let's see, on the one hand the advice is to trust in God. God is omniscient; He knows pi, the names of all the stars in those undiscovered galaxies beyond far, far, away, and who will win the World Series in 2097 (He even knows the score and the MVP). God is omnipotent; He could move the whole universe with a quick exhale, He upholds the cosmos with a word, and He could rip the peak off of Mt. Everest like a man tears a piece of sourdough bread from the loaf. God is good, more generous to wicked humans than St. Francis was to hampsters, lavishing kindness upon dirt-bags (literally!), and forgiving heaping piles of disobedience of those who had been the recipients of His prodigious love. To this we could add that He is eternally dependable, faithful, trustworthy, wise, patient, indefatiguable, and gentle.
On the other hand we are advised not to trust in ourselves. We are ignorant; we don't know what is going to happen five minutes from now, and can hardly remember what happened five minutes ago. We are weak; we are in awe of Lance Armstrong because he can ride a bike farther and faster than the rest of us. We are evil; we kill helpless babies, we rape, murder, and steal from others, and we choose political leaders who legalize murder and theft. To this we could add that we cannot be trusted to keep our word, we often betray our spouses and friends, we are foolish, impulsive, easily exhaustable, and harsh.
Hmmmm...Trust God?...Trust man?...God?...Man?... Yep, it seems like Solomon is handing down some pretty solid advice. But how often do we ignore it?