Category: Solomon

Ecclesiastes 7:8

“The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and a patient spirit is better than a proud one.”

This verse reminds us that beginnings are full of guesses and quick conclusions. We taste a sip, see a moment, hear a sentence, and think we already know the whole story. Pride rushes to judgment. Patience waits until the end.

I thought I knew about Pepsi. I was loyal to Coke and proud of it. Then came the taste test at the Kansas State Fair. One tiny sip and I chose Pepsi. I walked away surprised and not all that happy about it. Later, in Sam’s, I tasted a bite of gravy on a meatball. It was delicious, so I bought the gravy. I should have bought the meatballs. The powdered gravy ended up in the trash.

Neither of those small samples told the truth. A quick taste can fool you. I have learned that you cannot decide if you love swimming by dipping your toe in the water. You cannot judge a job by a brief tour. You cannot know a person by one conversation. You need time. You need patience.

Solomon knew that life needs more than first impressions. A patient spirit keeps us from walking away too soon. God often does His best work in the long stretch, not the first moment. Give things time to develop. Give people time to grow. Give God time to finish what He has started.

Pride wants to decide now. Patience waits for the end of the matter.

I’m Lonnie Davis, and these are thoughts worth thinking.

Our reading today is from Proverbs 15:2.

“The tongue of the wise makes knowledge acceptable, but the mouth of fools spouts folly.”

When I read that, I picture a careful marksman. Before he pulls the trigger, he takes time to ready his stance, aim his sights, and then fires. Try it any other way and the shot goes astray. Words work much the same. Speak before you think, and someone gets hurt. Think before you speak, and healing often follows.

The wise and the foolish both talk, but the difference lies in “how” they talk. The wise person shapes their words so they can be heard. They season truth with grace. The fool fires off opinions without care for the target.

For example, imagine someone who’s struggling with a habit they can’t break. The wise might say, “I know that’s hard. God helped me when I prayed through each small step.” The fool might say, “You need to stop being lazy. You should have fixed this by now!” Same subject, different spirit.

Solomon reminds us that knowledge becomes acceptable only when it’s delivered with love. So before you speak, take a breath. Ready your heart. Aim your words. Then speak to bless, not to bruise.

That is wisdom in action. It is Proverbs 15:2 lived out in everyday speech. One elderly woman wisely said, “I always taste my words before I spit them out.”

I’m Lonnie Davis, and these are thoughts worth thinking.

Proverbs 15:3 says, 

“The eyes of the LORD are in every place, watching the evil and the good.” 

That verse is both a comfort and a warning. We like the thought that God sees our faithfulness, but it is sobering to remember He also sees the moments we hope no one else notices.

I remember a day on the golf course when I met a man who apologized to me, a preacher, for his language. What struck me was not just his words, but his awareness. He noticed me, but he seemed blind to his 12-year-old nephew beside him. 

More troubling still, he seemed unaware that the Lord Himself was standing closer than either of us. It is easy to forget that what we do in private is just as visible to God as our public moments. 

We clean up our speech at church, hold our temper at work, and try to look like we have it all together. Yet the Lord is not fooled by our polished moments. He sees our hidden thoughts, hears our quiet complaints, and notices the attitudes we excuse because no one else hears them.

David asked, “Where can I go from Your presence?” The answer is nowhere. That truth is not meant to frighten us, but to shape us. 

When we live with a constant awareness that God is near, our behavior changes. We speak with more grace, we think with more purity, and we walk with more humility.

I’m Lonnie Davis, and these are thoughts worth thinking.

Did you ever notice how God tucks wisdom in the most unexpected places? Solomon did. This wisest of kings pointed his students toward something small, something most of us would step over without a second thought, an ant.

“Go to the ant,” he wrote in Proverbs 6:6, “consider her ways and be wise.”

Consider her ways. What a tender invitation. God doesn’t scold us for needing to learn. He simply says, “Look. Watch. Learn.”

And what do we see?  Verses 7 and 8 tells us that the ant is a creature with no supervisor, no motivational speaker, no life coach, yet she shows up. Day after day, she does what needs doing. She’s a self-starter in a world that loves to sleep in.

The ant works hard, this tiny teacher. No complaints, no excuses. She provides for herself and her colony with steady, faithful effort.

And here’s the part that stirs me most: she prepares. While the sun shines and the harvest ripens, she gathers. She knows winter is coming. She lives with one eye on today and one on tomorrow.

What if we lived like that? What if we stopped waiting for someone to push us, stopped living only for this moment, and instead moved forward with purpose and preparation?

God’s classroom has no walls. Today, your teacher might be six-legged and smaller than your fingernail.

Consider her ways!

I’m Lonnie Davis, and these are thoughts worth thinking.

Our Scripture for today is Proverbs 14:30.

“A tranquil heart is life to the body, but envy rots the bones.”

Ever notice how quickly joy evaporates when we start measuring our everyday life against someone else’s highlight reel?

You’re content with your home until you tour your neighbor’s renovation. Happy with your job until you hear about your friend’s promotion. Grateful for your blessings until social media reminds you of everything you don’t have.

Solomon knew we needed to be warned that “envy rots the bones.” Comparison robs peace. And envy? Envy is comparison with a bitter edge, a toxin that seeps into the marrow of our souls.

Notice the imagery. A contented heart brings life. It breathes vitality into your days, health into your body, lightness into your step. But envy doesn’t just wound; it rots. It decays from the inside out, gnawing away at the framework that holds you together.

We must remember that God hasn’t called you to live someone else’s story. He’s written one specifically for you, with your name on every chapter. Their blessings don’t diminish yours. Their success doesn’t cancel your purpose.

So quiet that voice that whispers, “Why not me?” Replace it with gratitude’s gentle refrain: “Look what God has done for me.”

Choose today to guard your heart against the poison of envy. Celebrate others without diminishing yourself. Trade comparison for contentment.

After all, a tranquil or contented heart isn’t just good theology.

It’s good medicine.

I’m Lonnie Davis, and these are thoughts worth thinking.

In Proverbs 24:16, Solomon said:

“Though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again, but the wicked are brought down by calamity.”

I love this text. It has instructed me many times in life. Notice from this text that both the righteous and evil man falls, the difference between the righteous and evil is whether they get up from their fall. 

The righteous man, the good man, falls but gets up. The wicked man falls down and just wallows in his failure.

A man named Harlan illustrates this. He was a sixth-grade dropout. Over his life, He worked as a farmhand, a railroad worker, an insurance salesman, a tire salesman, and had a failed attempt in politics. At the end of all these jobs, he retired broke. With little more than social security checks, he decided to sell chicken, more specifically, a chicken recipe. He went from business to business asking restaurants, cafes, and grills to use his recipe and pay him 5 cents for each piece they sold. He tried for two years. “No, no, no,” he kept hearing. In fact, he heard 1,009 rejections before someone finally said “Yes.”

We all know him now as Colonel Harlan Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame. When he died in 1980, he was a rich man, a millionaire. He failed 1,009 times, but he tried and tried again.

Winners keep on keeping on. Losers quit!

I’m Lonnie Davis, and these are thoughts worth thinking.

Our verse for today is Ecclesiastes 11:4.

“He who watches the wind will not sow, and he who looks at the clouds will not reap.”

In other words, if we wait until fear is gone or the conditions are perfect, we’ll never leap. Faith means acting even when we feel afraid, knowing that obedience brings its own reward.

A few years back, Liz and I took the grandkids swimming at the health club. Our gym has a giant fifteen-foot water slide for the kids. Grandparents are not allowed on it, at least that was my official position. Our little five-year-old granddaughter came over to me and said, “I want to go down the waterslide.” She took a breath and then added, “I wish I was used to it.”

Kids often make profound statements, and this was one of them. It is a profound truth that great opportunities usually come with great anxiety. But if you face your fears, they can bring great blessings.

Winston Churchill said, “If I do that which I fear, fear will leave me.”

After our then-little five-year-old got used to the waterslide, she had a great time. The next time you have a daunting task before you, smile and say, “I will get used to it.” In the end, you will have a great blessing.

I’m Lonnie Davis, and these are thoughts worth thinking.

The Yak-Yak Rule

Do you know the Yak-Yak rule?

We’ve all got that special person in our life. You know them because of what they are “going to do” someday.

The wise man warned about leading this kind of life.

“In all labor there is profit, But mere talk leads only to poverty.” Proverbs 14:23

Let me translate that into our language, if all you do is talk about what you are going to do, then you will be poor.”

So what do we say, stay away from people who live their life this way? Yes. we could say that friends with the yak yak habit will live in pain and bring pain to those around them. We could also note that life by the yak yak rule is one of underachieving.

But what we really should say is that sometimes I live with the yak yak rule. 
Sometimes it is me. 
Sometimes it is you.

So how can I tell if I live by the yak yak rule? Here is how: make a list of all the good plans you were going to do but never got around to it. Look at all the projects you started but never finished. Those are pretty good indicators of a yak yak personality.

Everybody does that sometimes but not everybody makes a habit.

What is the antidote? Start something and get it done. See it through to its completion. Maybe start with some simple things and build a habit. By so doing, you can overcome the Yak-Yak rule.

Lonnie Davis

Thou Fool!

I love it when someone starts off a sentence with “My Momma used to say.” 

Sometimes they are words of sage advice – “Don’t go outside with wet hair or you will get a cold.” Sometimes they are words of Biblical advice – “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” Of course sometimes these are wrong, but we heard them anyway.

One that I grew up with is “Don’t ever call anyone a fool.” This rule is based on a misunderstanding of Matthew 5:22, “Anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” What this verse is teaching is not about the word “fool,” but not to be contemptuous of one another person. 

The Bible uses the word fool many times. However, the main import of the Bible teaching is not about a person being called a fool, but about people being a fool when they behave as a fool.

Here are a few examples:

A Fool is:

1. A fool is anyone who believes he is always right (Ecc 5:1).

“Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.”

2. A fool is one who will not learn from pain (Proverbs 17:10).

“A rebuke impresses a discerning person more than a hundred lashes a fool.”

3. A fool is anyone who will not save a part of what they earn (Proverbs 21:20)

“The wise store up choice food and olive oil, but fools gulp theirs down.”

Well, these are three, but the Bible gives us many more. For example 

* Anyone who ignores his father’s wisdom (Proverbs 15:5)

* Anyone who argues frequently (Proverbs 18:6-7).

* Anyone who will not listen to counsel (Proverbs 24:7).

* Anyone who focuses on things and stuff instead of God (Luke 12:20-21).

None of us like to be called a fool or thought of as one, but if we want to avoid having God think of us as a fool, we must be sure that we do not do the things a fool does.

Lonnie Davis

King David had seen battles, bears, and giants who carried spears and wanted him dead. Yet in all these conflicts, he knew how to trust in God. He wrote, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.” (Psalm 20:7)

The meaning of this verse is that in his battles, even with a giant, he didn’t depend on his own weapons, he knew to lean on God.

Trust is not a natural thing. We need to know that things will work out as they should. Once as I was on a plane about to take off, there was a lady sitting across the aisle from me and she started weeping. She was openly, but silently crying. The flight attendant stooped beside her and tried to give her assurance. Finally, she encouraged the lady to take an anti-anxiety pill. Between her tears, the lady responded, “I already have.”

When we sit in a chair, we want to know that it will hold us. When we take a trip, we want to know that our car is able to bring us back home safely. When we fly on a plane, we have to trust and have confidence that the plane will bring us home safely. The need to trust is all around us.

Trust is also a fundamental aspect of our relationship with God. We are called to trust in God’s plan for our lives and trust that He will guide us in the right direction. Trust in God means that we surrender our fears and doubts, and put our faith in His promises. Proverbs 3:5-6 says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” 

Trusting in God will bring peace.

As God’s children, we should not trust our chairs or our cars more than we trust God.

Lonnie Davis