Wise Counsel

Many Proverbs talk about the wisdom of keeping good company, specifically staying near to wise counsel.  "Wise counsel" feels pretty proper, but that is how I know these verses. During my teenage years, when I was first immersed in scripture, I used a NKJV translation, so I still remember them this way:

• Proverbs 1:5 - A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel,
• Proverbs 12:15 - The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he who heeds counsel is wise.
• Proverbs 19:20 - Listen to counsel and receive instruction, that you may be wise in your latter days.
• Proverbs 20:18 - Plans are established by counsel; by wise counsel wage war.
• Proverbs 24:6 - For by wise counsel you will wage your own war, and in a multitude of counselors there is safety.

I've been thinking about my favorite Bible story of wise counsel, and one of my favorite stories altogether, the story of Esther. The book of Esther has everything a reader could ask for: a king, a beauty contest, a murder plot, and (spoiler alert) a victory by the underdog. Our leading lady, Esther, has acquired information that could save a group of people, her people, from the pending genocide. However, her intervention could mean her own death. She turns to her uncle, Mordecai, who tells her, "For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14, NKJV)

Such a time as this. I hear those words sometimes when I'm facing a difficult situation. Maybe I'm here for such a time as this.

As we have received wise counsel from people in our life, we should seek to be wise counsel for those we can. We may be in their life for such a time as that.