Happy April Fools' Day! No, I didn't try to pull one on you this year. But today being April Fools' Day did get me thinking about - you guessed it - jokes. Then in my devotions I was reading Proverbs 10, in which I stumbled upon vs. 23. It says, "Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool, but wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding." That really got the wheels turning.
What Solomon, the author of Proverbs, is saying is that fools don't even take sin seriously. Doing wrong is funny to them. They treat it callously, as if it's nothing. "It's just a joke," they say. Oh, honestly how sad. Fools are so foolish that they think sin is funny.
But the counter to this verse speaks about something much better. "But wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding." I don't know about you, but I'd rather be labelled a woman of understanding than a fool any day. What Solomon is doing is he's giving us the two sides of the coin, the good and the bad, the opposites. You either do wrong and treat sin casually, thus showing yourself to be a fool or you delight in wisdom, take sin seriously, and show yourself to be a man or woman of understanding.
On this April Fools' Day, as we think about jokes, let's not laugh at sin, but delight in wisdom.
What Solomon, the author of Proverbs, is saying is that fools don't even take sin seriously. Doing wrong is funny to them. They treat it callously, as if it's nothing. "It's just a joke," they say. Oh, honestly how sad. Fools are so foolish that they think sin is funny.
But the counter to this verse speaks about something much better. "But wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding." I don't know about you, but I'd rather be labelled a woman of understanding than a fool any day. What Solomon is doing is he's giving us the two sides of the coin, the good and the bad, the opposites. You either do wrong and treat sin casually, thus showing yourself to be a fool or you delight in wisdom, take sin seriously, and show yourself to be a man or woman of understanding.
On this April Fools' Day, as we think about jokes, let's not laugh at sin, but delight in wisdom.