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Sometimes when I’ve had a rough day at the office I’ll go home and start complaining to my wife about a situation that irritated me, a person who got under my skin or a class that didn’t go well and I’ll tell her what I’m going to do in response to whatever that day’s frustrating scenario happened to be. After listening to my rants and proclamations she’ll say with great calm, “and what do you hope to accomplish by doing that”. Upon hearing that I’m immediately forced to reconsider my intended course of action. For some reason that simple question is all it takes to make me reevaluate what I’m about to do. The Book of Proverbs tells us that discretion is one of the great products of wise living. Discretion is the quality of showing good judgment. When my wife asks me what I hope to accomplish by doing whatever it is I’m thinking of doing, she is encouraging discretion.
Proverbs 11:22 says this about discretion.
“Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout
Is a beautiful person who shows no discretion.”
I love this proverb because of the imagery of something of great value (a gold ring) in the snout of an animal that likes to slop around in the mud. It would be a colossal waste. So too would someone’s great beauty be a waste without good judgment. The proverbs call us to show discretion in all that we do; to consider the impact of our decisions before we make them; our emails before we send them; our words before we speak them.
Falstaff’s famous quote from Shakepeare’s Henry IV states that “discretion is the better part of valor” but according to the Proverbs it’s also the better part of beauty. And if you’re like me, you may have found discretion to be the better part of friendships; the better part of relationships with colleagues at work; the better part of teaching; the better part of being married; the better part of raising children. In other words, discretion seems to be the better part of just about everything we do in life. Since we can’t all have someone like my wife at our homes asking us questions that spur us to good judgment, may we turns our hearts to God to bless us with discretion in all that we say and do.
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