Jan's Musings: Two Sides to Wisdom

Thomas Edison tried nearly 2,000 times to develop the carbonized cotton thread in the incandescent light bulb. He said, "I didn't fail, I found out 2,000 ways how not to make a light bulb."

There's two sides to WISDOM.

"Your wise sayings are knickknack wisdom, good for nothing but gathering dust." — Job 13:12 (The Message)

I had a great revelation today when I was reading Job 11–12. For a long time I have been having some thoughts about how we, as humans, can "block ourselves" off from letting new, fresh ideas into our lives. Oftentimes this attitude comes from fear, a tired and worn-out spirit, or an arrogant "know it all" attitude.

I love what Job's friend Zophar says about WISDOM: it has two sides. The wisdom that comes AT you from the outside, and the wisdom that comes OUT of you from the inside.

My understanding… Be careful that you don't live thinking that you're all hyper wise because you read, listen to wise people and hang around successful people. It's one thing to be a "copy cat" – but there needs to come a time when YOUR wisdom button needs to be flipped to the ON position inside you.

Oftentimes, people (myself included) tend to think that the truth and advice we are hearing is for someone else… We immediately think of someone we know who could do with the nugget of wisdom we just heard, forgetting the fact that we ourselves have not yet mastered the skill.

See, we grow up with certain understandings and beliefs that have been instilled in us through our upbringing, experiences we've had and people we've observed. Whether you know it or not, you have a personal philosophy, a moral and ethical belief that makes you who you are. Most of what we learn this way is 95% thinking. We have to constantly and actively be re-evaluating this personal belief system and shift it.

Here's a deeper issue: sometimes there are vows we have made to ourselves because of some kind of emotional pain that we have been through. For instance, we "lock people out" of our personal space; we "cut them off", as it were, from ever being able to "hurt" us again. Or we have a humiliating or embarrassing experience and we make this unspoken vow that "I will never ever put myself in that position again as long as I live."

Sometimes that is the very vow that hinders us from ever being "free" to start our lives over, as it were; to give ourselves another chance to prove that we CAN do anything we set our minds to.

Final word. To wise up, start with YOUR mind. Apply what you're learning to YOU. Your body, actions, understandings and everything else in life will follow.

(If you want to read the whole thing, go to www.biblegateway.com – look on the menu on the left and click on READING PLANS, then click on today's date: June 28. I like to read the daily reading in The Message.)