This is a longer chapter, so I definitely had to break this into two parts.  Today one verse really jumped out at me:

12 Apply your heart to instruction and your ear to words of knowledge.

I don’t know that what I am thinking is necessarily what the author was intending, but as I was reading this I loved the progression.  The first part, where we are urged to let our hearts be applied to instruction, sounds to me like it is saying allow ourselves to be shaped and modeled, and be disciplined to take wisdom and put it to work in our lives.  It sounds like a subtle nudge to action instead of a nudge to hearing.  It is the second verse where we are urged to hear and to find wisdom.  In other words, the author is breaking it into two pieces - hearing and doing; listening and applying.  I love that.  It is easy to read the words of Proverbs and be swept away by their gravity and the wisdom that often seems so obvious, but it is entirely another thing to APPLY those words in our lives.  Application is the key though.  We have to hear AND do.  We can’t listen our way to wisdom.  Ironically, or not, I have found that faith is grown in much the same way...we read and we study, but then we have to go our and actually love people, take a step forward in faith that God will give us strength in the moment, and we have to BE Christians to FEEL God’s Grace.  In that way, growing our wisdom and growing our faith are very similar.  And a part of me wonders if that is part of the plan that God designed.  It’s funny how that works.