“Everything changes” they say. We believe we are smarter and more advanced today than ever before.  I remember as a teen telling my mom that she was just old fashioned and didn’t understand the world today. I think every generation believes that they have greater knowledge and a more evolved way of thinking.

Today we are told that the traditional views of raising children, of marriage and morality are all antiquated and obsolete. I was listening to a commentator share how the hope of our society was in the young people of our country. He went on to elaborate how the children of today aren’t shackled by the old fashioned ideas of what defines a family or marriage.  Ask yourself if the drifting of our society has been positive. Are our families stronger or our children safer?

Proverbs 8 points out that God used wisdom in the very beginning. That His design for the world, His design for you and your families were established in the wisdom of God. This wisdom of His original design is available to us today.

By the way my mom had an answer for my statement about not understanding and being old fashioned. She looked me in the eye and said simply, “When you are older and more mature you will see things my way.” She was right.  I can only hope that as you and I mature we will see things God way.

Just something to thinks about.

If your mother was anything like mine you grew up hearing tales of woe. You know the kind, right? About the boy who stuck his tongue to the flag pole, the child played with matches and burnt the house down or the girl who wandered from her parents in the store and was never seen again.

Parents repeat the stories to their children to open their eyes to the dangers in the world. The hope is that the child will learn from the mistakes of the unfortunate naughty children.

In Proverbs 7 the father points out a tale of woe. A tale of a man who took the wrong path to the wrong place to see the wrong person. The father’s hope is that his son would learn from the unfortunate end of the foolish man. 1 Corinthians 10:11 says “These things happened to them as examples”. We can choose to learn from our own mistakes. We can choose to suffer the consequences of our own choices. Or….or we can choose to learn from the examples of others. Choose to avoid the pain and hurt in our own life by seeing the pain in someone else’s life.

Just something to think about.

When I was a little kid I remember watching “A Christmas Carol”. There was one scene that caused me to hide under the blankets. The scene is when Scrooge is visited by his dead partner Jacob Marley. Here is a poor man (well a ghost) dragged down by all those chains. The thought of all that weight bound around someone forever was a really scary thought.

Now I know you’re thinking what this has to do with Proverbs chapter 6. If you take a look at the man it is describing in each section you will see a man that is bound. Think about it, the first is a man bound by someone else’s financial burden, the next the man bound by laziness, the third man bound by his own wickedness and the last man is bound by his own lusts.

The thing to keep in mind is that God wants us to be free. Free to be what He wants us to be. Free to do what He wants us to do. Yet time and time again we engage in things that bind us, things that weight us down.

Will we choose to be free in Christ or in bondage by sin. Jesus sums this up so well:   Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin…..Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. John 8:34,36.

Just something to think about.

I once had someone try to explain to me how he was justified filing for divorce. You see he had met his soul mate. No, he wasn’t talking about his wife; he was talking about the woman he had an affair with. You see he had married the wrong woman and that God really wanted him to be with his soul mate. (I wasn’t buying it and I’m sure God didn’t either.)

Do you know where the idea of soul mate came from? Wikipedia states:

In his dialogue The Symposium, Plato has Aristophanes present a story about soul mates. Aristophanes states that humans originally had four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces, but Zeus feared their power and split them all in half, condemning them to spend their lives searching for the other half to complete them.

The Bible is very clear in the fact that God designed marriage to be between one woman and one man for life. Instead of spending energy finding another one, spend your energy into making the one your with “THE ONE”. Instead of making another commitment let’s keep the ones we made to the spouse of our youth.

Are we going to buy into a Greek myth or cling to the Bible?

Just something to think about?

We already covered chapter 3 in church as the introduction to Proverbs so we are jumping right into chapter 4. In this chapter the father is trying to leave a legacy. I’m at the age in which I know I won’t be around forever and I want to leave a mark on this world, a legacy. My oldest daughter looks like me, not something any girl wants to hear. But what is even more interesting is in many ways we act alike. In a way when I’m gone a part of me will live on….a legacy.

While a legacy is great some of us have the chance for something else, something better….a heritage. My mom is Christian woman. She brought us to church anytime the doors where open, she taught Sunday school, jr. church and Good News club and showing her children God. Now here I am preaching and teaching, dragging my own kids to church and hopefully showing them God. I hope that I have passed on something that will continue on.

You see a “Heritage” is all about passing along something that was passed on to you with the desire for them to pass it on.

If you were raised in a Christian home you have a chance to pass that along. You have a chance to create something amazing, a Heritage. Maybe you weren’t raised in a Christian home but the exciting thing is that you have a chance at passing on a legacy and maybe someday by God’s grace create a Heritage.

Just something to think about

Have you ever colored with a little child? I can’t tell you how frustrated I get because they won’t color inside the lines. Okay, I know that they don’t have the motor skills required to color inside of the lines but I feel it justifies my frustration if I say they “won’t” instead of “can’t”.

If I try to find the reason it bothers me so, I can only come to one reason….because you are just supposed to stay within the lines. While the neatness of your coloring books shouldn’t rate high on your list of things to worry about, there are other lines that not only important but even vital.

Our world is full of lines, let’s consider a few. We should all be thankful for the lines down the center of the road. These powerful lines not only guide us but also keep us safe from the other drivers on the road (how many news reports contain the phrase “and the other driver crossed the centerline”).

Ponder as well the contractor who constructs the bridge following the lines of the blueprint. I personally wouldn’t want to drive onto a bridge that the contractor decided to just “wing it”.

Lastly we all think of lines as straight lines but what about the lines that make up the words you are reading right now? Imagine the confusion if everyone decided that we would write whatever to mean whatever we wanted. Imagine the return of the Dark Ages if we removed all literacy from the world. Imagine someone taking away all your books and magazines, the internet, even your Bible!

In chapter 2 I’m just reminded that Wisdom acts as the lines in our lives. It leads us where we should go, it warns us against the dangers ahead. Wisdom tells us how to best build our lives so that we can withstand the storms of life .Wisdom opens our eyes to understanding life and our place in it.

Just something to think about.