Synonyms and Antonyms for Wisdom

Scripture:
I, wisdom, share a home with shrewdness
and have knowledge and discretion.
Proverbs 8:12

Observation: Wisdom describes herself. Among the words she uses are ... shrewdness, knowledge, discretion, understanding, strength, love, righteousness, and justice. In addition, she gives a shorter list of negative words that do not represent her ... evil, arrogance, and perversion.

For all these words, there is a clear understanding about how such words align to reality, and that alignment is through the fear of the Lord. It is the Lord who is the base understanding by which - for example - someone can determine the knowledge of a situation, or conversely the evil of an idea.

Application: The one synonym or antonym for God's wisdom that surprises me is ... shrewdness. This is a direct statement that the way someone manages their spending is a reflection of God's wisdom. Yes, of course there are repeated statements throughout scripture that fools spend money recklessly, get into debt, and overall make themselves poor through the mismanagement of money. However, "shrewd" as a bit of an 'Ebenezer Scrooge' connotation to it. That term is akin to miserly.

That said, the Lord certainly promotes caring for the poor and others within communities, and so this word certainly should not advise me to hoard money. Instead, it should have a more obvious guidance in my life, which is that I should not recklessly spend money.

My wife and I do this pretty well. We are not in debt, and we take purchasing decisions very seriously. On the other hand, we tend to randomly decide to go out to nice dinners often, or buy some items for our comfort that perhaps we don't especially need.

I often wish I had more of God's wisdom. I actually put this in the negative context, as in praying that I would not be prideful and arrogant, or that I would avoid common pitfalls of life. However, in the positive context, I could stand to be a bit more shrewd, and thus having addition resources to give to others.

Prayer: Lord, is there a time of hardship coming for my household? I pray your protection over us during these times when the future seems so uncertain. At the same time, may we be wise in how we interact with your great blessings in our lives, returning to you all we should and even more, with an understanding that we ourselves do, in fact, have plenty, a full measure, pressed down, and overflowing. Amen.