Ecclesiastes 5:1 Meaning Guard Your Steps When You Go

Approaching what is highest is dangerous, and most people rush in careless. The reckless pay for it. To stand before the sacred asking to be heard, chattering demands and staging gestures, is to arrive backward. The posture that fits the encounter is silence and attention, the readiness to receive a correction rather than deliver a demand.

The sacrifice of fools is loud, performed, and empty, made by a man so busy displaying his devotion that he never notices the harm in his own heart. He considers not that he does evil, and that is exactly the trouble. Reverence begins with listening, because listening admits you do not already have the answer. Come to what is greater than yourself prepared to be changed by it, not to instruct it. The wise man closes his mouth before he opens it.