At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it?” (KJV).
“Why is there in the hand of a fool the purchase price of wisdom, since he has no heart for it?” (NKJV).
Proverbs 17:16
Translated into modern terms, this proverb would run like this: why does that fool have a tuition check in his hand when he has no intention of studying at all?
Coming at it from another direction, the question would be why would a person be willing to pay the price for an education in one way, when he is not willing to pay that price in another way—the most important and fundamental way?
And perhaps the question answers itself. The first way of paying the price for an education—the tuition check—has the appearance of seriousness, especially if the college is a high end college with sky high tuition. But real seriousness is measured in another way, and this is through the day-to-day commitment to discipline.
It is the difference between paying a one-time fee for a piece of exercise equipment, where the pain is fleeting and temporary. After that, the money is gone, and can be forgotten. But the discipline of getting up at 5:30 every morning in order to work out on the exercise machine is not an over-and-done exercise of discipline. It is a daily thing, and perseverance is required.
So the heart for wisdom is something that has to be registered every day. You cannot decide to go out and buy some wisdom one day and then forget about it for six years. If you don’t pursue it daily, you don’t have a little bit of wisdom—rather, you have no wisdom, and exercise equipment taking up space in the garage.
