Pro 3:21 My son, do not lose sight of these— keep sound wisdom and discretion,
Pro 3:22 and they will be life for your soul and adornment for your neck.
Pro 3:23 Then you will walk on your way securely, and your foot will not stumble.
Pro 3:24 If you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.
Schedule today does not allow me to work through these verses. However, I will work through them when we look at the parallel passage in Proverbs 4:20-22. I read the following on these verses by Alexander MacLaren. Maclaren was born in Glasgow on February 11, 1826, and died in Manchester on May 5, 1910. He had been for almost sixty-five years a minister, entirely devoted to his calling. He lived more than almost any of the great preachers of his time between his study, his pulpit, his pen. MacLaren’s religious life was hid with Christ in God. He walked with God day by day. He loved Jesus Christ with a reverent, holy love and lived to make Him known. In his farewell sermon at Union Chapel in Manchester, where he pastored for forty-five years, he said: “To efface oneself is one of a preacher’s first duties.” [Source: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, https://ccel.org/ccel/maclaren]
We may observe the earnest exhortation to let wisdom and understanding be ever in sight. Eyes are apt to stray and clouds to hide the sun. Effort is needed to counteract the tendency to slide out of consciousness, which our weakness imposes on the most certain and important truths. A Wisdom which we do not think about is as good or as bad as non-existent for us. One prime condition of healthy spiritual life is the habit of meditation, thereby renewing our gaze upon the facts of God’s revelation and the bearing of these on our conduct.
The blessings flowing from Wisdom are again dilated on, from a somewhat different point of view. She is the giver of life. And then she adorns the life she gives. One has seen homely faces so refined and glorified by the fair soul that shone through them as to be, ‘as it were, the face of an angel.’ Gracefulness should be the outward token of inward grace. Some good people forget that they are bound to ‘adorn the doctrine.’ But they who have drunk most deeply of the fountain of Wisdom will find that, like the fabled spring, its waters confer strange loveliness. Lives spent in communion with Jesus will be lovely, however homely their surroundings, and however vulgar eyes, taught only to admire staring colours, may find them dull. The world saw ‘no beauty that they should desire Him,’ in Him whom holy souls and heavenly angels and the divine Father deemed ‘fairer than the sons of men’!
Safety and firm footing in active life will be ours if we walk in Wisdom’s ways. He who follows Christ’s footsteps will tread surely, and not fear foes. Quiet repose in hours of rest will be his. A day filled with happy service will be followed by a night full of calm slumber, ‘Whether we sleep or wake, we live’ with Him; and, if we do both, sleeping and waking will be blessed, and our lives will move on gently to the time when days and nights shall melt into one, and there will be no need for repose; for there will be no work that wearies and no hands that droop. The last lying down in the grave will be attended with no terrors. The last sleep there shall be sweet; for it will really be awaking to the full possession of the personal Wisdom, who is our Christ, our Life in death, our Heaven in heaven.
A Word of Grace 