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Proverbs 4:5 · World English Bible

Proverbs 4:5 Meaning Get Wisdom

Get wisdom. Get understanding. Don’t forget, and don’t deviate from the words of my mouth.

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What does Proverbs 4:5 mean?

Wisdom cannot be bought or stored, so the getting asked for here is a willingness, a mind turning toward the gentler teacher and consenting to be taught. Understanding follows the same way, not as facts collected but as sight corrected, the frightened glance giving way to the clear seeing love makes possible.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 4:5 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

Wisdom cannot be bought or stored, so the getting asked for here is a willingness, a mind turning toward the gentler teacher and consenting to be taught. Understanding follows the same way, not as facts collected but as sight corrected, the frightened glance giving way to the clear seeing love makes possible. To forget it is to let the ego reclaim the mind, and to decline from the words is to trade that clear sight back for fear.

The whole of the effort is simply to keep facing the right direction, choosing again each time the mind drifts toward guilt.

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 4:5 today

  1. Sit with something you have already decided about, a person, a situation, your own past, and ask honestly whether you might be seeing it wrong. Leave the question open instead of answering it.
  2. Let one person today finish telling you something without you already preparing your reply. Listen like you do not know how the story ends.
  3. When you are sure you are right in the middle of an argument, take one breath and face the other direction for a second. Ask what this would look like if you were not under attack.

What am I unwilling to see differently right now?

The same truth in other traditions

Zen

A cup already full learns nothing. The willingness to be empty is the whole of the practice.

Tao Te Ching 48

In learning the Way you gain by subtracting. Day by day something false is dropped until clear seeing is left.

Sufism · Rumi

You do not have to find the light. Take down the walls you built against it.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

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