Proverbs 4:10
"Hear, my son, and accept my sayings and the years of your life will be many."
Solomon is declaring what sounds like a supermarket tabloid promise: LONG LIFE. What he is saying is that there are numerous roads of foolishness that will present themselves through the course of your life. Each one of these in some way shortens your life. If you allow yourself to be seduced to follow your selfishness, then to some measure your life will be shortened. Your choices matter - embrace wisdom. Dig for the triple-win choice and action, and then you will have extended your life to the longest possible for it will not be shortened by moral foolishness.
Solomon is selling us on why we should embrace wisdom as a way of life. Its rewards are more long-term and more hidden than the immediate promises of the fool’s choices. He is telling us, in various ways, that it will pay off to go this way. He is saying that this is the secret rule from the one who made the universe. If you go for the win that gives everyone else a win as well, then you will have a myriad of rewards – one of which is longer life.
How is it possible for our life to lengthen when God knows everything about our life from its beginning to its end? The biblical understanding is that God knows the day you will die and everything you will do. He also knows the day you will die if you take any one of the thousand choices that will be available to you this month. In Matthew 12, Jesus tells us that God knows the possibilities that flow from every possibility. From our end, there is variability to the length, blessing, and honor of our life. From God's end, He knows what will happen if we take any one of the millions of different paths we will have the opportunity to live out. If we choose wisely we, in essence, lengthen our life. We have changed our destiny from our point of view by our choice even though God knew that before you chose it. It is a real choice for us; it is foreknown by God. So choose wisely and bring rewards to yourself, your family, your community of faith, and your society.
Until tomorrow,
Gil Stieglitz