““By wisdom a house is built and through understanding it is established;
through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures”
Like Honey to My Lips
The Bible, the Holy Scriptures of the Christian faith, is replete with wisdom for the murid and non-murid alike. In fact, the longest zabur (the Judaeo-Christian equivalent of the ginans) in the Bible - an acrostic poem in the original Hebrew - beautifully extols the virtues of God's Word:
“How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
I gain understanding from your precepts;
therefore I hate every wrong path.
Your word is a lamp for my feet,
a light on my path.”
Suleyman and the Proverbs
Perhaps the most concentrated body of wisdom, however, is found in the book of Proverbs. A collection of pithy general truths, most of the sayings are attributed to the prophet and king Suleyman, son of Dawud.
Suleyman inherited the throne at an early age and lamented that, figuratively speaking, he was "but a little child" (1 Kings 3:7)
God Almighty appeared to him in a dream at night, saying "Ask what I shall give you" (1 Kings 3:5)
In an answer that demonstrated an already mature heart and which provides a model of God-oriented thinking for all of us, Suleyman answered
"[G]ive your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?"
Pleased that Suleyman had refrained from asking for long life, riches or victory over his enemies, God Almighty blessed him with all these things and such wisdom that He promised
"none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you"
His wisdom is our blessing.
Rare and Beautiful Treasures
The image at the top of the page shows Mowlana Nizar II's residence in Iran, crumbled and empty. As we study the sayings of the wisest king to have ever lived, let us strive to build and establish the houses of our minds through wisdom and understanding and fill them with rare and beautiful knowledge in order to understand the path laid out for us by God Almighty.
View Part 2 here
Originally published by October 2015