Children are amazingly TEACHABLE. Every day they stare outward, soaking up everything and memorizing new things without trying. Babies watch people and figure out faces and expressions and gestures and words. It’s an incredible, lightning-fast process. And reading! Imagine beginning first grade in August and knowing almost nothing about reading, and by Christmas you are sounding out words and reading Luke chapter two. Reading well is a sophisticated skill. It requires you to recognize letters, then groups of letters called words, then groups of words called sentences—and there are subtle cues, emotions, tone of voice. There is so much involved in reading well. Yet most kids master it.
Then something changes. One day that baby staring outward at the world turns his gaze on himself. The child looks at how much he has learned and congratulates himself: “I’m so smart.” The urgency is gone; the CURIOSITY is gone. Life is no longer fresh. School does not seem to offer anything new. So he tells himself he has learned enough (“I can read, after all!”) and he does not want to continue learning. Worse, some decide they are AGAINST learning. School is not for me, reading is not part of my life, etc.
I know you can see the foolishness in that.
Yet Christians do the same thing. We think we’ve heard all the Bible stories, we’ve learned about Noah’s Ark, and Moses, and David and Goliath, and Jesus Loved the Little Children, and what else is there? So we are done learning.
“Do not be wise in your own estimation” Romans 12:16.
Paul says do not make the mistake of considering yourself wise and thus closing the door to the kind of learning that brings wisdom. If you are humble, you will continue learning and your wisdom will INCREASE. Don’t look at your wisdom and congratulate yourself. Instead, look at the mysteries that remain around you. Stay humble and keep learning!
God, give us the wisdom to be humble—and the humility that will make us truly wise.
ΑΩ
Household Words: 