It is always fun to open up Proverbs and start looking at all of these little zingers...that amazing one-liners.  it is difficult to pick just two or three for some extra focus and attention as well.  Nonetheless, here we go.

One of of them was easy because this is literally one of my top 2-3 verses in all of scripture.  We looked at this a couple of weeks ago:

3 The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.

What’s so great about this is that it is worded so succinctly...the wise person is a person who sees danger and flees from it, he isn’t the person who sees it and plays at the edge.  He flees it.  The simple, or the fool, is someone who doesn’t do that...he plays at the edges of it, or he runs right into it.  And I love this...it doesn’t tell us that he dies...just that he suffers.  The fool plows face first into danger and in some way will suffer for it.  And that’s the trap with temptation; it often isn’t sudden and pronounced, the punishment...sometimes it creeps up on you until you realize that all of your choices are now bad choices.  You wake up and you are surrounded with chaos...you are suffering for it.  Great, great verse!

The next one that caught my attention was verse 10:

10 Drive out a scoffer, and strife will go out, and quarreling and abuse will cease.

Another comment I have made is that the last few years have been the most stressful of my life.  During that time, I have lost some of ‘me’...I have generally been less joyful, less playful, less optimistic and less of upbeat than I normally would be.  I have just been less ‘me’.  In that, I have become more cynical as well, and I have become more of a scoffer than I was before.   This verse reminds me that I want to monitor myself as I am getting my stress resolved and while I am getting myself more ‘back to normal’...I am encouraged and motivated by this verse to NOT be the scoffer in others’ eyes...I don’t want anyone to think about me in this way, that driving me out of their company will resolve some of the tension in the group or the organization.  I don’t want to be the scoffer and the source of the struggle.  Just a great reminder about being self-aware.

Then, for my 3rd verse, I love this reminder about raising kids. There are two verses directed at this topic in today’s 16 verses, but this one was a great reminder to me:

15 Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.

It is great to remind ourselves that our kids are one day going to face the world.  And the world is tricky - as verse 3 says, a fool can move forward without immediate consequence but one day will reap what he sows.  It is just the way of life.  And, the world often doesn’t punish immediately and harshly...the world often punishes by way of compounding.  It is often just the last straw that breaks the camels back in the real world, and when things fall apart you are left wondering how you got here.  We have a duty to help our kids realize they have veered with much more immediacy.  We have a duty to help them to develop a sense of where the edges are, where the struggles come into play, and how to deal with them.  We can’t blow past this and hope for the best...this requires intentionality and hard work.  Let us not run from this responsibility and from discipline that is fit for their age and stage of life.  Great reminder here.