By James Chambless, Guest Columnist
When I was a boy in middle school, it was often my job to sweep the floor in the basketball gym. I expect it was my coach’s way of keeping me busy and out of mischief. I always swept the floor with one of those 6-foot-wide dust brooms. Usually running so I could get done more quickly. I never imagined that I would ever be asked to sweep a gym floor again once I left school.

I was though. I was a deacon at a church that had outgrown the sanctuary and was holding Sunday morning services in the gym. You guessed it. I was asked to sweep the gym on Saturdays. I never got that dust broom out of the closet though. I went to the outbuilding where the lawn equipment was stored and came back with a leaf blower. You can sweep a gym pretty quickly using a leaf blower.

Utilizing handy new technology to solve old problems is wisdom.

Full disclosure, in case you decide to try this, you have to be there pretty early on Saturday to keep the Sunday morning worship from smelling like two cycle oil exhaust, and you will need to change the air filters a little more often.

Proverbs chapter two is all about gaining wisdom and putting it to good use. You really have to do both parts.

We have all known somebody who knows everything about everything but never actually does anything about anything. I have always wondered why the people who know everything never seem to know how annoying that can be. But I digress.

You can gather up a lot of knowledge, but it only really makes a difference when you put it to work. Folks often say that knowledge is power. I say knowledge is not enough. You also have to do something with that knowledge. You can memorize the whole cookbook and still starve to death if you don’t start applying all that knowledge by actually cooking something. I bet you have flipped through a cookbook before and instantly ruled out some recipes just because you could tell by looking that you wouldn’t like it. That is applying wisdom, too.

Solomon says that wisdom is what causes you to do the good and right things, and wisdom is also what keeps you from doing wrong and harmful things.

I was getting an oil change a few years ago and the young lady who was the crew chief was sharing her story with me. I have no idea why really. I am just that man who will listen, I guess. Anyway, she got to the sordid part of her family history. We all seem to have one or two of those parts. Her grandfather was the best of men. She told me where he was buried and how they all went to visit. Except for the one useless family member.

He’d had a falling out with grandpa and been cut off. But when the useless one died, somebody took his ashes and scattered them over grandpa’s grave. Grandmother, mother, and this daughter were all just heartsick about it because grandpa would not have approved and it just seemed so disrespectful after all that had gone before. “But,” she shrugged, “what can you do about it?”

And you know me well enough by now to have realized I am practical to a fault and that I can’t hardly have a thought without saying it. Two words, says I. Leaf. Blower. She stared at me goggle eyed for a minute. Then she whooped and laughed. Then she broke down and cried in my arms. She went to the cemetery with a leaf blower after work.

The point of that little account, is that you know more than you think you do. You have accumulated more wisdom than you might realize. You have done a lot of good work and you have avoided a lot of mistakes by using the wisdom you have earned the hard way. You know enough to make another good decision today. You know enough to avoid doing the wrong thing today. You know more than you think you do. It is time to put what you know to work. It is time for wisdom.

[August-17-2021]