“Intelligent people are always ready to learn. Their ears are open for knowledge.” Proverbs 18:15 NLT
Old wisdom is still good wisdom. Wisdom writers captured a truth that made its way into modern leadership principles even today. Smart people are CURIOUS. Leaders are curious. And curious people do not behave brash and have a hubris oder about them. No, they are learners. Smart people are lifetime learners.
Proverbs identify learning as “open ears.” We now know that we can open all our senses to learn new things. So we not only listen with curiosity, we can also see, smell, taste and touch. Stopping to see a beautiful sunset, to smell the roses, to taste a new cultural food vastly different than our favorites, and to touch a worldly-wise, weathered hand of our super seniors.
Smart people are eager, joyful, even giddy to experience new things. And, I believe that as long as we hold a curiosity and pursuit of being learners, it has a way of sifting, processing all that new knowledge into wisdom.
No one wants to simply be a Snapple Cap to impress their friends. Pithy quips and useless facts can get so tiring! Believe me, I’ve tried it, it doesn’t win friends.
Prayer
Dad,
Thankfully I’ve been the curious one since my earliest memories. Taking things apart and just hoping I could remember how to put them back together 🥴. That natural bent has help me be adventurous and kind of an explorer in most areas. You know this about me, I love new tech and new ideas and have a tremendous amount of respect for inventors and dreamers, even if they fail. I’ve always want to invent stuff! I am also thankful that I love and serve a creative God! That’s probably what frustrates me about the Church the most. We have total access to the Holy Spirit and we keep dragging along, often a decade or more behind the times and it just sucks the life out of a LIVING community called the church. I don’t want us to be cool, trendy or really even relevant. I just want us to reflect you in everything you do. You can do something new every second of every day for all eternity and NEVER run out of creative ideas. I just us to live that kind of life – full and ever curious for good, godly ways.