Beth Parkinson
Creative Media Assistant
CBN Europe
Wow, what a picture this chapter conjures up. We start today’s reading by meeting Wisdom as she prepares her home. With my mind’s eye, I see an elegant lady, gracefully conducting herself from room to room, guiding the people in each to make the preparations, setting tables, pulling up chairs, opening windows and airing the space. She flows back to the kitchen, prepares the food for the party. She goes out from a house filled with light, filled with provision, and invites, calls to, even meets the simple on their path, extending a life-giving invitation to community.
Contrast this with the Lady Folly. Verse 14 shows her sitting at the door – in my mind, she is unkempt, slumped in her doorway, no effort made, her home is dank and dark. She speaks of stolen drink and food eaten in secret – those who go into her house will have no elegant place settings meeting them, no prepared meal. Her invitation will strip life from them, not replenish and refresh.
Both women call from the highest points of the city. Hills raised up above the citizens. And if position alone was a guide to the feet of those passing by, it would be easy to think there was no distinguishing between the lady hosts.
I wonder what choices you are facing, today, that at first glance have very little between them. Take a moment to look deeper. Examine the fruit each path will offer.
But, in reality, the one has prepared, worked, laboured, so that when you seek her out, you will be rewarded. The other, by contrast, has made no preparations, she doesn’t even meet you on the way, but just calls from where she is slumped.
The journey to her house is still uphill, but the reward she offers for the climb is to glorify the selfish, to allow those making sinful choices to steal or operating in the shame of the shadows to stay where they are. Not to elevate, enhance or enable a better life for those that join her in her thievery and slovenliness.
I wonder what choices you are facing, today, that at first glance have very little between them. Take a moment to look deeper. Examine the fruit each path will offer. Examine those offering the choice, metaphorically, or even literally. Is the fruit of their lives, or the fruit of this avenue going to bring light and hope into your life? Have the preparations been made? So that as you climb the hill of effort to pursue that choice, you are met with an open-armed welcome.
Let wisdom guide your choices today. Seek her out. Climb the right hill.
