Posts Tagged: Proverbs 19:2

“One Tangle at a Time”

On June 9, 2020 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

We are re-staining the deck and some surrounding woodwork. As with all tasks, there are always pre-tasks to do. One of them was taking down some lights that my wife had put up around the woodwork. There is a catch. We have wisteria.

Wisteria is a wonderful plant. It is tough and grows fast. It vines and can provide some wonderful shade.

However (why is there always a however?), the wisteria and the strings of light seemed to be getting along a little too well. They weren’t quite married, but they seemed to be headed in that direction.

I got to one place where I wasn’t sure that I could disengage the wisteria and the lights. So, I mulled the alternatives. I could cut the wisteria. No! I don’t like killing living things. Houseflies, ants (when in the house), and poison ivy are exceptions.

Or, I could give up on this strand of lights. However, I am rather frugal, so that didn’t seem to be a good alternative.

Somewhere I read or heard that if you have only two choices, you don’t have a choice. Instead, you have a dilemma. So, I tried to think of a third possibility. And sometimes when I slow down and think, I actually have a thought.

I said to myself, “Well, why not start trying to slowly disentangle the wisteria from the light, and see what happens?” So, that is what I did. And within a couple of minutes, I had succeeded. The plant, the lights, and I all breathed a sigh of relief.

Is there a point to this story? There is!

All of my life, I have been pretty tangled. And I have longed—indeed, lusted—for a quick and easy solution. And my quick and easy solutions were indeed quick but were almost never easy. In fact, that weren’t even solutions. They simply deepened the original problem and created some new problems.

There is a verse that says,

“Desire without knowledge is not good,

and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way.”

(Proverbs 19:2, English Standard Version)

Slow down, dear reader—and dear self! Be content to make a little progress! One tangle at a time. One tangle at a time.

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“OF BURNT TOWELS AND ENTHUSIASM WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE”

On February 23, 2018 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“Enthusiasm without knowledge is no good; haste makes mistakes.” (Proverbs 19:2, New Living Translation, italics mine)

“E-K=H+M (Enthusiasm minus Knowledge equals Haste plus Mistakes. (DTEB)

I was trying to do something nice for my sweetheart.  I really was.  However, as Proverbs 19:2 points out, it is important to think through things.

I have gotten into the habit of occasionally warming up my wife’s towel in our dryer at home, so that she has a nice warm towel when she gets out of the shower.  It’s not difficult to do, and it seems to please her.

However, while microwaves will warm up towels, they may not be the best thing to use to do so.  As with most of the things I learn, I found this out by trying it.  I cannot recommend this method.

I had done this successfully for a day or two while we were on vacation, but on our last day of vacation the process seemed to take a little longer than usual.  I took the towel out, and it wasn’t warm enough.  So, I put the towel back in the microwave for a minute.

I started smelling something burning, but thought it was somebody smoking outside our room.  It wasn’t.  When I handed the towel to my sweetheart, parts of the towel looked and smelled like a marshmallow that had been left in the fire a bit too long.

The maids had brought some brand new towels to our room the day before.  Apparently they had not been washed (the towels, not the maids!).  My wife told me (after I had toasted the towel) that the brand new towels probably had some chemicals on them that made the towels more flammable.  She may have been making that up just to make me feel better, but I don’t care.  It did make me feel a little less stupid.

I confessed to the motel manager that I had ruined one of their good bath towels, and asked him to put it on our bill.  He was gracious and didn’t charge us for it.  I was not brave enough to tell him how I had ruined the towel.  Now that a week has gone by, I decided to come clean.  I am copying him into the e mail I send out to my readers.

It is very important to have your heart in the right place, and to be enthusiastic about serving others, especially those you love.  However, it is also very important to do so in a mindful manner.

This seems to be precisely what Proverbs 19:2 (quoted above) is driving at.  Christine Roy Yoder, commenting on this verse, puts it very nicely:

“Without knowledge, even well-intentioned desire can result in harm, just as ‘one who is hasty with feet misses’—presumable the path forged by God and the community . . . .  The wise are informed and deliberate.”[1]

I don’t know much about math, but I have come up with a formula that I will try to memorize and use regularly:

“E-K=H+M

Enthusiasm minus Knowledge equals Haste plus Mistakes.

The next time I feel enthusiastic about doing something, I will try to remember this formula.  I will try also to remember Proverbs 19:2, Yoder’s good words, and the burnt towel.  I will strive to think before I microwave!

[1] Christine Roy Yoder, Proverbs, Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries (Nashville: Abingdon, 2009), 202.  This is one of the very best commentaries I’ve seen on Proverbs.  It is very faithful to the text, brief, well-written, and insightfully practical.  If you want a really excellent guide to the book of Proverbs in the Bible, buy her book!  (No, I do not get any royalties for recommending it.)

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