Proverbs 15:20-23

The brightest joys and the bitterest tears in this world both flow from a parent's heart, and a child holds the tap. A mother's yearning love over her children is itself a faint picture of the heart of God toward His own. To despise that love is to despise the nearest earthly image of heaven's.

Here is the saddest thing about a fool: folly is not just his habit, it is his joy — he sins without even being tempted, and resents the gospel precisely because it offers to take his folly away. But notice the verse's quiet promise hidden in the word "joy": folly never actually delivers the joy; its whole essence is that it thought it would. The man of understanding stops chasing the feeling, puts duty first, and finds the joy comes along behind — exactly as the Lord said: "whosoever will lose his life for my sake... shall save it" (Mark 8:35).

Going it alone fractures your plans; wise counsel sets them on a foundation. The skill is self-distrust without paralysis — humble enough to ask, decisive enough to still act. And since even the best human counsellors are fallible, make the surest Counsellor's own testimonies the chief members of your council: take God's Word as the man whose advice you weigh first and trust most.

There is real joy in saying the right thing at the right moment — and the verse's whole weight lands on timing. A true word delivered at the wrong moment bounces; the same word in due season lands like a gift from above. So pass by the moment of irritation, correct in private, never open with an attack, and aim the word at the actual person in front of you — because a word spoken for everyone, like a coat made for everyone, fits no one in particular. The right word, well-timed, can win eternity: it was a word that turned Saul on the Damascus road.