Here's Your Sign

Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? (Proverbs 1:20-22 ESV).

 

By the time Bill Engvall became part of the huge Blue Collar Comedy Tour, he was already a successful comedian. His "Here's Your Sign" routine might have even been only second in comedy catch phrase popularity to fellow Blue Collar comedian Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might Be a Redneck" bits in the 1990s. In his act, Engvall began cleverly pointing out the regular stupidity he observed in the world around him. The idea grew beyond his stage act and led his 1996 "Here's Your Sign" album to become a platinum seller. The bit even became a charting country music song and video with Travis Tritt. Just one of the many routines Bill Engvall has used in the past goes something like this: “My uncle saw a deer head on our family room. ‘Did you shoot him?’ he asked. ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘The deer ran through our wall and got stuck.’” Yep, that’s a “here’s your sign moment” for sure.

 

Our reading today uses the same logic. Here the proverb writer uses a literary device called personification, which ascribes personal qualities to a thing or concept. Personified, Lady Wisdom shouts, “How long are you going to act foolishly as someone without understanding, refusing to learn what you need to know?” Any one of us may have heard similar words from a friend or parent: “When are you going to wise up?”

All who want to follow Christ must never suggest that believing in God’s love shown in Jesus calls for being simple. The Creator of this amazingly complex world is the God we must fear, leading to the knowledge of how to live in his world. Recall that Proverbs begins with this truth: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7).

 

I actually say it a bit differently: You get what you get because you go where you go; if you don’t like what you’re getting, don’t go where you’re going. Each one of us must answer Lady Wisdom’s question for ourselves. It’s our responsibility to answer with the kind of lifestyle and choices that show we seek the wisdom to walk obediently in God’s ways. The ­choices are ours to make. Make them ­wisely according to the instruction God gives us in the Scripture.