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Day 184, or July 3. You don't always know best.

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Our thoughts today are rooted in Proverbs chapter 12 verse 15. The ways of fools seem

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right to them, but the wise listen to advice.

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First the big picture surrounding this verse. Today we enter the second volume of Solomon's

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parables in which he contrasts the godly and the wicked. He writes about the actions of

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a wise son. It would have been interesting to have heard his father David's comments

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on this. Most of this advice is for men, but not exclusively. Women are not forgotten.

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Wait until tomorrow's reading.

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And now today's action step. It seemed like a good idea at the time. How many times have

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you heard that when someone's bright idea has collapsed? How many times has it been

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you saying it? Our verse today reminds us that sometimes our proposed actions may seem

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right but only because we haven't thought them through enough. According to this verse

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we are clearly not urged to just blindly do what others say, but it does encourage us

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to at least listen. I have found that very often those who don't listen to others are

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not as convinced by their own ideas as they at first seem to be. They wear blinkers and

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don't want to hear alternatives in case their fragile convictions crumble. If you were convinced

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of a particular course of action and will not talk about it to anyone, it could be that

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you were fearful that it may not be the best idea you ever had. In which case, pause for

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a while, sleep on it, and ask God again. If we fail to listen, we fail to learn from other

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people's wisdom, or indeed their mistakes. A good friend of mine, who took an obvious

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wrong decision in his life, and later had to go back to square one before he could make

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any progress, stubbornly refused to admit he got it wrong. He always said it was a learning

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time, but we both knew it was a mistake, and he would have recovered from it a lot quicker

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if he had admitted he got it wrong, and promised to listen to others a little more carefully

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in future, before taking action.