Daily Devotional 1

In reading Proverbs this morning, I found a scripture that backs how I have always felt about fighting. I preface my thoughts however with this - there is a time to fight and that is to defend your life or family - but this instance is really very rare. A huge majority of fights are simply temporal matters we need not be drawn into.

Let me introduce the scripture here. "Though you grind a fool in a mortar, grinding him like grain with a pestle, you will not remove his folly from him" (Proverbs 27:22/NIV). In my younger years I can't recount any fights I saw where a foolish person changed his mind because he was beat up. The victor may have won the physical fight but it did not change the venom the foolish person spewed. As a matter of fact, most fights seemed to end with the foolish person all bloodied and battered still talking hateful or opposed to the victor.

I used to say all the time, beating someone up does not change their mind. They may not be up in their opposers face but they continue their foolishness. How many times have we pulled a friend back saying, "It's not worth it". There are no truer words we could say to our friends.