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“Take firm hold of instruction, do not let go; keep her, for she is your life.^” Proverbs 4:13, NKJ

“Grip it and rip it!” I hadn’t ever heard that one.  A kid, a frikk’n kid, who still holds a few NCAA Division 1 passing records, a gifted athlete, was taunting me like the baggie jeaned old coot I felt that I was during that round of golf.  I was about to hit my best shot of the day, off an elevated tee-box in the clean, thin mountain air, and the wind was at my back.  He had out drove me almost 20 yards on a consistent basis all day.  I was getting tired of this heckling.  As I approach my ball, I heard him, “Grip it and rip it!” The interpretation in my mind was, “Don’t have a heart attack gramps.  Go ahead, risk fudging your Huggie and swing hard!” So, I rehearsed in my brain, “normal swing… head down… good contact… don’t try to kill it” and obliged him with a smoking drive right down the middle.   I’ve been playing the game for most of my life!  My ball was easily 290-300 yards out there.  Daddy was feeling good!  So Cody tees it up next and I said, “Rip it yourself.” So he did.  About the time we drove up close enough in the carts to see that his ball was probably 35 yards in front of mine, Cody asked me, “Hey Mike, have you heard about the new Walmart that’s going to be built in this neighborhood?” I should have seen it coming, “No.  What about it?” With a charming grin and devil-like shark eyes glaring, “They’re going to build it on the parcel of land between where your ball is setting and where mine flew over.” Of course our cart partners are laughing their butts off.  I grunted, “That’s what this world needs, another smart-ass kid.” You would have thought he’d just won the Masters.  Long day.  Where the crap is that frikk’n beer cart?

“Grip it and rip it!” works.  Wisdom is the subject.  Solomon is talking to his kids and telling them to hold tight to the truth, build their lives around those precious helps and guard those delicacies of God as if their life depended on it.  I had Nicole (my eldest daughter) with me one time in Africa.   She was young, beautiful and quite the novelty.  I would get slightly nervous for her to be too far out of my sight.  When we would get into ministry situations where hundreds of people would line up for prayer, I would make arrangements with the pastor for someone to watch Nicole.  I couldn’t be in two-places at a time.  I didn’t think too much about my defensive posture while we were in Africa.  A couple months later, that same African pastor was in Texas at the church I had started.  He told my congregation, while laughing, that I protected Nicole in Africa like she was an egg.  At first, I thought that was a silly analogy, until I remembered that most of my compensation in those villages was eggs and chickens.  What they gave was indeed fragile, but precious to them.  My daughter was precious to me, so I’ll admit I could have been a bit paranoid and grossly over protective, but we usually take care with what is precious to us.  Solomon wanted his sons and daughters to clutch tightly to wisdom.  He knew the course that lay before them had challenges, traps and peril.  Wisdom is long and straight… right down the middle.  Keep your head down and ignore the chatter.  Focus.  Grip it and rip it!

-MDP-