Proverbs 24:32: We Can Only Possess What We Experience

We can only possess what we experience.

Truth, to be understood, must be lived.

There is a difference, a qualitative difference,

Between what I know as a fact and what I know as truth.

It stands as a great divide to separate my thinking

From when I'm thinking foolishly and when I've understood.

- Charlie Peacock, Experience, The Secret of Time

My wife worked for the Department of Agriculture in a rice-growing country. As a young, unassigned researcher, she was the chosen recipient of a bag of potatoes and a guide to growing potatoes. She read the book intently, from cover to cover, because she had no real experience with potatoes or their requirements. Potatoes weren't like rice. There were few potatoes available in the markets. Her family's generations of rice-growing experience was of little use.

So, book in hand, she experimented, planted, harvested and presented her results. Some things worked. Other things didn't. The book had word and diagrams that pointed at truth. But it did not become truth for her until those tubers and that soil and that fertilizer passed through her hands.

Life works this way. We have guidelines-heuristics-rules of thumb-proverbs-that others have gathered for us, that we use to shortcut decision making and bypass mistakes all the time. These guidelines are necessary, but it is experience that leads us through that to the other side. "As long as 'received teaching' doesn't become experiential knowledge, we're going to continue creating a high quantity of disillusioned ex-believers. Or on the flip-side, we'll manufacture very rigid believers who simply hold on to doctrines in very dry, dead ways with nothing going on inside."[1]

The book of Proverbs is wonderful. It shortcuts straight to the bottom line in life. It distills pages of theology and hours of reasoning into a few words designed to instruct. Those words point the way, but you have to watch a few fools in their folly, or be one yourself before the gut level impact of the truth comes home.  The pattern of the wise can be described, but its rewards require first-hand experience.

Truth cannot grab us until it has been filtered through our lives-until our lives have depended upon it. Consider: It is one thing to know that poverty exists, know the effects of poverty and the means of its alleviation. It is another to be poor.

Experience requires time. I often wished I was more mature than I am, where the truth I knew flowed seamlessly into the choices that I made. I wish that there was never a time when I was not mature (mainly so I wouldn't need to forget my penchant for the epic faux pas). Thankfully, though, time and the grace of God have smoothed some rough edges and weathered away stubborn flaws.

Proverbs says, "Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness." (Proverbs 16:31) Living in an age that idolizes youthfulness, we sometimes forget that the core problems for people have not changed: anger, love, selfishness, bitterness, grief, desire, self-deception, envy and malice. Those dynamics have not altered, and wisdom acquired in those storms still holds true.

I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw: - Proverbs 24:32

 What I experience now is really all I will carry with me into eternity.  I pray that my hard-earned graying hair speaks to truth that has settled deeply in my soul. Amen.

[1] Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance (What Hods Us Back from Genuine Spiritual Experience?)