Dave's Diary

Daily Readings: Psalm 60 and Proverbs 23:1-12

“While dining with a ruler, pay attention … (v1) … Don’t eat with people who are stingy (v6) … Don’t wear yourself out trying to get rich… (v.4) … Don’t cheat your neighbor by moving the ancient boundary markers (v.10)”

In these verses, the father seeks to impart wisdom to his son through a series of warnings relating to the motives that drive him. He warns him against being motivated by the satisfaction of physical desires, for example, the desire for tasty food. Whether this tasty food is on offer from a wealthy and powerful person (1-3) or from a stingy person (6-8) his point is that there may be hidden consequences to the sweet satisfaction of one’s desires. It is a warning to never allow ourselves to be so driven by our physical desires that we are blinded to the potential pitfalls that accompany them. This is, of course, equally relevant to many other physical desires too.

Similarly, he warns against being driven by the desire for wealth (v.4-5) which can be totally deceptive. Sacrificing our time, health, relationships or principles (v.10-11) on the altar of material gain is utterly foolish. Any material gain can disappear in the blink of an eye and leave us utterly alone and filled with remorse at the sudden realisation that we have lost precious people and our own health along the way, and that we have aligned ourselves against the Lord through compromising His justice in the pursuit of wealth.

As always, true life is to be found instead in the path of wisdom. And wisdom, at its heart, begins with living by the deeper motive of pleasing God in all things.

Heavenly Father, God of Wisdom, transform my heart by the Holy Spirit so that I may be most deeply motivated by the desire to please and glorify You, and also increasingly motivated by the desire to seek the highest best of others, with every moment of my life. Amen.