Anyone who works with or coaches young people, particularly college students, must fight the urge to laugh when these players and students talk about how busy they are. “Just wait,” you think. “You don’t know what busy is!” Yet, if you think about it, they are busier than they have ever been.
Consider the college baseball player. Between a full load of classes, several weeks of fall practice, unending strength and conditioning programs, spring practice, and up to five games per week through May (or later), “busy” is an understatement. These players are in a stage of life for which they cannot possibly be prepared, at least not fully prepared. Each of us are.
Each person, at the very moment they have likely mastered the current stage of life, is thrust into a new one. Childhood leads to adolescence, which leads to adulthood, which leads to parenthood, which leads to empty-nest syndrome, which leads to senior adulthood. Each stage is progressively more difficult and potentially more confusing than the one before it.
How can a person successfully navigate each stage of life? How can a high school player be ready for college? How can a college player be ready for marriage and parenthood? Here’s a hint: don’t make it up as you go.
Check this out from Proverbs 9:4–“Whoever is inexperienced, enter here!” (HCSB). Wisdom is speaking in this proverb. Who is inexperienced? All of us. Yes, even you. None of us knows exactly how to handle the next stage of life. Those in high school are inexperienced with college. Those who are married with no children are inexperienced as parents. Those with young children have no idea how to parent teenagers. Those who are in the prime of life are clueless about being a senior adult. Even senior adults are inexperienced for the last years of life. We all lack experience.
The Book of Proverbs sounds like a broken record at times. We need wisdom. God has it. Therefore, we need God’s wisdom. This message needs to be repeated, over and over. We are all foolish to a degree, inexperienced to an extent. We all need to hear the voice of wisdom and follow it. Thank God for this constant reminder in Proverbs.
A prayer for those who relate:
Dear God, thank you for the constant reminders that I need wisdom. I recognize my inexperience, my tendency to make up life as I go. You are the source of the wisdom I need. I come to you for it. Make me like you. Amen.
