Proverbs 9:1-6 (NRSV)
Read Proverbs 9:1-6 on biblegateway.com
Verse 2She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine,
Verse 3She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls
Verse 4"You that are simple, turn in here!"
Verse 5"Come, eat of my bread
Verse 6Lay aside immaturity,
Devotion
Wisdom is setting her table. She is pulling out all the stops, pouring wine and breaking bread. She is inviting the simple and the senseless into the shelter of her big house. Her summons echoes God’s call, through Isaiah (55:1-7) to the penniless and pathetic exiles: “Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”
This means you, by the way, and me. We occupy a moment and whack away within a culture in which wisdom is mistakenly assumed to equal information. Data can be twisted into commodity for sale or trade. It can be parsed into packets, stripped, surrendered or stolen. How upside-down it is to imagine true wisdom instead as a place to reside, and a relationship in which to revel. Come to the feast, friends; our need alone is the price of admission.
Prayer
Source of wisdom and friend of the fallen, the grace of your giving has no end. Find us in our poverty and pathos, even as we are senseless and stunned. Haul us from mean and hungry streets into the shelter of your healing house. Feed us from your own hand, that we may walk in the ways of insight. Amen.