April Fool’s Day // Proverbs 10:23

Happy April Fool’s Day, I guess. Are you susceptible to the pranks and jokes played on days like today? Our verse for the day speaks to those who like doing wrong, tricking people, and making mischief. The main idea centers on those who get their jollies from doing wrong to others. The Bible teaches that looking at sin as entertainment is treacherous at best; still, we see people foolishly succumb to those temptations. Proverbs 10:23 encourages us to live with understanding and wisdom. Knowledge is what we know. Wisdom is appropriately applying what we know. Understanding is recognizing why we make the choices we do. This all points to God. We are not to do mischief as sport, because it hurts our witness and relationships with God and others. Knowing this should cause us to live with virtue. The understanding, therefore, is doing our best to build up others as opposed to making someone look like a fool. After all, if we make that the aim of our life, we ourselves become the fool, right? Let’s take the knowledge, wisdom, and understanding of Ephesians 4:29 into today for the sake of growing closer to God and the people He’s given us to do life with: “Let no unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth, but only that which is good for building up, that it may give grace to the listeners” (MEV).