Wisdom Belongs in the Meeting

By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.

Proverbs 8:15

Read Proverbs 8. Focus on verses 1 through 21 and 27 through 31. The meeting begins with a simple question about profit. By the time it ends, someone has decided how employees will be treated, which customers deserve attention, and what information can be left out of the offer. A spreadsheet may be on the screen, but moral decisions are being made around it. In Proverbs 8, wisdom stands where public life happens. She calls at the crossroads and city gates. Her voice belongs in decisions about movement, commerce, leadership, and judgment. We cannot confine her to a private devotional hour and expect our public choices to remain wise without her. Wisdom speaks truth and rejects crooked speech. She hates pride, arrogance, and evil. These qualities matter because intelligence by itself can serve almost any purpose. A clever person can design a fair agreement or invent an impressive way to exploit someone. The chapter binds sound judgment to moral character. When wisdom says kings reign and rulers decree justice through her, the emphasis is on the wisdom required for righteous government. Holding an office does not automatically make a ruler wise. Authority needs instruction. The ability to make a decision increases the responsibility to make it justly. That reaches into smaller places of leadership. A parent deciding what is fair between children, a manager allocating work, and a business owner writing a refund policy all exercise power that affects another person's life. We may call these practical matters. Proverbs calls us to bring God's wisdom into them. The chapter then opens a much larger view. Wisdom is poetically present as God orders creation, setting boundaries for the sea and establishing the world. The picture joins beauty, order, and delight. Wisdom is woven into God's good ordering of life. It is not merely an emergency service we call after disorder becomes painful. Perhaps you have been asking God to bless an endeavor while leaving its methods unexamined. What would wisdom say about the promises, incentives, pressures, and exceptions built into it? Would someone with less power experience your arrangement as fair? The chapter's public voice invites us to widen our understanding of worship. Reverence belongs beside the contract and the hiring decision. It belongs wherever our authority touches another human being. Before asking whether a plan will succeed, make room to ask what kind of order it will create for the people who must live inside it. Put It into Practice Review one rule, agreement, or expectation you control. Examine it from the position of the person with the least power to challenge it.

Who experiences the consequences of a decision you have the power to make?

Wise and righteous God, enter the practical decisions I have treated as separate from faith. Make my use of authority honest and fair. Let the arrangements I create reflect care for people as well as attention to results. Amen.