Good Morning! I'm your host Lonnie Wibberding, and you are listening to God Notes. A daily devotional podcast sent out from sunny Southern California.
Today is Friday, December 29, 2023.
Someone once said attitude is everything. After living on this earth for 45 years I think I agree. How you and I see the world depends on our attitude. A positive, learning attitude, over time contributes to building a good life. A negative, pessimistic attitude, over time, contributes to life getting worse and worse.
Outlook determines our destiny.
Some things don't change much in the 3,000 years since Solomon's time. Solomon too saw people with good attitudes and bad attitudes. At some point it seems he wanted to share wisdom with one of these people with a bad attitude. And he discovered some things about humans that he shares in our text today.
Proverbs 9:7-9 says:
7 Whoever corrects a mocker invites insults; whoever rebukes the wicked incurs abuse. 8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you. 9 Instruct the wise and they will be wiser still; teach the righteous and they will add to their learning.
There is advice we could give to people that would improve their life. But there is a certain kind of person that makes fun of others, and finds the bad in others -- mockers -- that you can't give advice to. It does no good. And Solomon's conclusion is, "Don't correct them. Leave them be. It's not worth it."
That's sad to think about. That someone could have a good life, but their attitude keeps them in a bad one -- because they won't listen to wisdom. With these people it's better to just let them be.
But there are also wise people. Humble people who want to learn more and be wiser. That realize they don't have it all figured out. Those are fun people to have a deep conversation with. And when the conversation is done, everyone is wiser for it.
Which leaves us with a choice. We can choose to be open, learning, growing, and live a good life. Or thinking everyone else doesn't know as much as we do, we can miss the life we could have.
May God Bless your day. We'll talk again tomorrow.