What if Solomon had been an average guy, living today?
But Solomon wasn’t an average 21st century guy. He didn’t tweet. He took time to think, and so must we.
King Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived, and his life gave little indication of speed. Rather, his life showed the virtue of deliberate meditation, deliberate slowness. He knew 3,000 proverbs, each of which took time to commit to memory and each of which only had value in the time taken to ponder it. Here is just one example of how Solomon grew in wisdom and understanding:
I passed by the field of a sluggard,
by the vineyard of a man lacking sense,
and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns;
the ground was covered with nettles,
and its stone wall was broken down.
Then I saw and considered it;
I looked and received instruction.
A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
and want like an armed man.Proverbs 24:30–34
Here Solomon walks by a field and pauses to observe that it has become overgrown with thorns and that the wall surrounding it has fallen into decay. He sees that only a lazy man, a sluggard, a fool, would allow his land to fall into such a state. Even in the midst of his busy life as king, Solomon responds by taking the time to meditate on this, to consider it. And having done so, he receives divine instruction: “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.” It was only through his willingness to slow down, to take time, that he drew a lesson from this foolish man and his misused land. Virtue was found not in hastening by but in taking time to slow down, to pause, to think. He did not immediately dash off a Twitter update or snap a photo to post to Facebook. He stopped; he watched; he learned.
The challenge facing us is clear. We need to relearn how to think, and we need to discipline ourselves to think deeply, conquering the distractions in our lives so that we can live deeply. We must rediscover how to be truly thoughtful Christians, as we seek to live with virtue in the aftermath of the digital explosion.
—Tim Challies, The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion (Zondervan, 2011), 122–123.
TrackBack URL: http://www.thirstytheologian.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1980
Share this post:
Posted in: Proverbs · The Next Story · Tim Challies
Link · 0 Comments · 0 TrackBacks
← Previous · Home · Next →
