Friday!

Proverbs!

My child, listen when your father corrects you. Don't neglect your mother's instruction.

What you learn from them will crown you with grace and be a chain of honor around your neck.

Proverbs 1:8-9 NLT

I've heard the first part of this proverb used as a weapon to get children to do what the parent wants. 

But nothing in the first 7 verses, the introduction, does it indicate this is a parenting manual. This is about gaining wisdom, discernment, insight, so that we might live a life of justice & fairness, a life in line with God's heart.

The presumption here is that there were gems of goodness and truth found in the people who raised us. That might be our biological family, adopted, fostered, or those adults who showed the care and love for us that we needed.

Dig out the gems of goodness from them and hold on to those. For some that will be easy, for some it might take some determined excavation, but in all of us is the echo of God's voice, the image, cracked and mangled as it may be, of the One who made us.

This proverb encourages us to look for that goodness, not to discard it, and to be a person in someone elses life who passes on life giving grace and honour to others.

(A "chain of honour" seems the direct opposite to the burden of shame. How can I speak honour to replace shame for someone today?)

#proverbs 

#wisdom

#somethingtochewon