Two Proverbs

I took special interest in two verses we read today, the first being Proverbs 26:12:

Do you see a man wise in his own eyes?
   There is more hope for a fool than for him. 

This is what I take pains NOT to be. We should all work on being as knowledgeable as possible on important matters and working ceaselessly to see that we deploy that knowledge to further God's kingdom, but it's a very small step to turn that into pride in our abilities. I won't belabor the obvious other than to say that we must always be vigilant to remember where our gifts come from and what we're supposed to do with them.

Which leads to the second verse, Proverbs 27:17:

As iron sharpens iron,
   so one man sharpens another. 

We sharpen each other not through rebuke or caustic comments, but by edifying and improving each other. All throughout the Proverbs are verses telling us to be gentle and fair with each other, and especially our enemies. Even when we're right and others are wrong, there are right ways and wrong ways to correct each other. 

To shape iron, it has to be heated to a high temperature (its melting point is 2786 degrees Fahrenheit, but it doesn't need to heated that high) and then shaped, either through molds or by beating it. There are two things--the shaper and the iron. In life, sometimes we're the shaper (and hopefully by molding and not by beating), but sometimes we're the iron that needs to be shaped. What we must always pray for is to understand which role we are and submit to it willingly.

Scott