The Cramming Conundrum – Proverbious – Day 46 – Proverbs 9:9-10

Proverbious | David Lindner

Have you ever crammed for a test? I know I did. For much of my life I have been a procrastinator. For some reason, there are just some things that I can’t get motivated to do until the last minute. I don’t know why. I understand it with things like paying the bills, paying taxes – basically anything that’s going to take away our money. But, when it comes to tests, I don’t really understand it. I do like learning, but I just can’t get myself to learn the stuff for the test.

So, what did I do. I’d usually find myself cramming for the test the night before, the morning of and walking to the class. It wasn’t usually that effective. I could get by, but that’s about it. And considering the whole point of these tests was to see how well I knew the information, the long-term results were pretty abismal. I couldn’t tell you a test that I crammed for, and I certainly couldn’t tell you the information I crammed.

Cramming is foolish. (Just in case my kids read this some day, I want to make sure they hear me say that…) The only thing it accomplishes is saving you from failing the class. But it doesn’t get you anything.

We can’t cram wisdom. Wisdom develops daily, not in a day. There is no upload program like in the Matrix, though I’ve often dreamed of how awesome that would be! Morpheus, could you upload the wisdom module? Nope.

A wise person seeks to become a little bit wiser each day. When you are a wise person, you don’t let a day go by that you don’t learn something. You understand that if you’re going to eventually be wise enough to avoid any major mishaps, it’s going to take a life-long pursuit.

A wise person receives teaching. In fact, they welcome it. If you meet someone who doesn’t want to be taught, beware! A wise person wants to be taught. They understand that there is more to learn than any one person can ever know, so we need to remain teachable. The foolish person puts up their defenses when someone suggests a new idea. When someone suggest something that the fool doesn’t already know or insinuates they may know more than the foolish person…well…it’s not usually very pretty. Battles ensue, tempers flare and wisdom is thrown out the window.

Compared with yesterday’s warning of correcting a fool, today we have just the opposite.

Proverbs 9:9-10

Give instruction to a wise person, and he will become wiser still;
teach a righteous person and he will add to his learning.
The beginning of wisdom is to fear the Lord,
and acknowledging the Holy One is understanding.

So, if you’ve been wondering whether or not you are on your way to becoming a wise person, one way to find out is to ask yourself this simple question, am I teachable? Think back through some of the times you have been taught or someone tried to teach you something. How did you respond? Did you get irritated and defensive? Or did you welcome their teaching with an open mind.

Ultimately, our wisdom is coming from the Lord. If we aren’te teachable when it comes to other humans speaking into our lives, chances are pretty good we won’t allow God to speak truth to us. So, we begin with fearing the Lord, we acknowledge that the Holy One has everything we need for life. Then we also recognize that he sometimes uses other humanoids to bring us that truth.

Wisdom cannot be crammed. By us or by others upon us. We have to be teachable at all times.