God's Wisdom for Navigating Life

From pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller comes a beautifully packaged, yearlong daily devotional based on the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs is God’s book of wisdom, teaching us the essence and goal of a Christian life. In this 365-day devotional, Timothy Keller offers readers a fresh, inspiring lesson for every day of the year based on different passages within the Book of Proverbs. With his trademark knowledge, Keller unlocks the wisdom within the poetry of Proverbs and guides us toward a new understanding of what it means to live a moral life. God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life is a book that readers will be able to turn to every day, year after year, to cultivate a deeper, more fulfilling relationship with God. This makes a perfect companion to Keller’s devotional on the Psalms, The Songs of Jesus .

Named one of the "World's 50 Greatest Leaders" by Fortune

“Through the Kellers’ beautifully written devotionals, readers will be inspired and motivated to practice what they read ‘in thought, word, attitude or deed.’”
—BookPage

“Superb . . . we should be grateful to Keller for his wisdom, scholarship, and humility.” 
—The Gospel Coalition

“Tim Keller’s ministry in New York City is leading a generation of seekers and skeptics toward belief in God. I thank God for him.” 
—Billy Graham

“Unlike most suburban megachurches, much of Redeemer is remarkably traditional. What is not traditional is Dr. Keller’s skill in speaking the language of his urbane audience. . . . Observing Dr. Keller’s professorial pose on stage, it is easy to understand his appeal.” 
—The New York Times

“Fifty years from now, if evangelical Christians are widely known for their love of cities, their commitment to mercy and justice, and their love of their neighbors, Tim Keller will be remembered as a pioneer of the new urban Christians.” 
—*Christianity Today 

“At Redeemer Presbyterian and in several books, Keller shaped a vision of Evangelicalism that de-emphasizes politics and stresses care for the poor, personal sacrifice, and inclusiveness across ethnicity and class.” 
—Fortune*

Auteur
Timothy Keller was born and raised in Pennsylvania and educated at Bucknell University, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Westminster Theological Seminary. His first pastorate was in Hopewell, Virginia. In 1989 he started Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City with his wife, Kathy, and their three sons. Today, Redeemer has nearly six thousand regular Sunday attendees and has helped to start more than three hundred new churches around the world. He is the author of Hidden Christmas, Making Sense of God, and The Songs of Jesus, as well as The Meaning of Marriage, The Prodigal God, and The Reason for God, among others.
 
Kathy Keller received her MA in theological studies at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Kathy cowrote The Meaning of Marriage and The Songs of Jesus with Tim. God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life is their third collaboration.

Résumé
From pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller comes a beautifully packaged, yearlong daily devotional based on the Book of Proverbs.

Proverbs is God’s book of wisdom, teaching us the essence and goal of a Christian life. In this 365-day devotional, Timothy Keller offers readers a fresh, inspiring lesson for every day of the year based on different passages within the Book of Proverbs. With his trademark knowledge, Keller unlocks the wisdom within the poetry of Proverbs and guides us toward a new understanding of what it means to live a moral life. God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life is a book that readers will be able to turn to every day, year after year, to cultivate a deeper, more fulfilling relationship with God. This makes a perfect companion to Keller’s devotional on the Psalms, The Songs of Jesus.

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INTRODUCTION

There may be readers picking up this book who profited from our earlier yearlong devotional book, The Songs of Jesus. In that case especially, it is helpful to reflect on the differences between Psalms and Proverbs. The Psalms are filled with expressions of emotion, of pain, joy, and praise. They show us how to process our experiences before God. Proverbs is a very different book. It calls us to study, to think, to learn the practical discipline of centering all our thoughts and actions on God. Indeed, one of the main messages of Proverbs  is—you’ve never really thought enough about anything. Psalms is about how to throw ourselves fully upon God in faith. Proverbs is about how, having trusted God, we should then live that faith out. If the Bible were a medicine cabinet, Psalms would be the ointment put on inflamed skin to calm and heal it. Proverbs would be more like smelling salts to startle you into alertness. Here are a few pointers for studying the book of Proverbs with profit.

Proverbs as Poetry

Proverbs is not a set of “simple steps to a happy life” for quick consumption. A proverb is a poetic art form that instills wisdom in you as you wrestle with it. As English readers we cannot receive the full force of the original, and yet we can still learn enough about the features of Hebrew poetry to discern layers of meaning that we would otherwise miss. Perhaps the most fundamental mark of Hebrew poetry is parallelism. Two phrases, clauses, or sentences are brought into close connection with each other so that they modify and expand on each other. The second may magnify and extend the thought of the first, or it may instead offer a counterpoint that limits and softens the first idea.

In each case the two thoughts mutually clarify each other, sharpening our understanding. So Proverbs 13:6 says, “Righteousness guards the person of integrity, but wickedness overthrows the sinner.” The first clause helps us understand “wickedness” in the second clause more specifically as a lack of integrity. Because of parallelism, the words “wicked” and “righteous” and “wise” and “foolish,” which show up constantly and (seemingly) repetitiously, actually mean somewhat different things in each proverb. We miss much of the meaning of a proverb unless we compare the clauses very closely and watch for the interplay between words.

Another prominent feature of Hebrew poetry, as in all poetry, is the importance of vivid images. A beautiful but foolish woman is like a gold ring in a pig’s snout (Proverbs 11:22); a lazy employee is like vinegar to the teeth (Proverbs 10:26). Images and metaphors are always invitations to think out the many ways that “this is like that.” A thoughtful reader can list five, then ten, then more ways that the image explains the principle.

Proverbs as Puzzle

Goethe once said of languages that “whoever know only one, knows none,” and that is likely true, but it is even more true of proverbs.1 If one proverb says, “The morally good always have a good life,” and later another says, “Sometimes the morally good suffer,” we modern readers think we’ve found a contradiction. That’s because we think of proverbs either as individual s tand-  alone promises or commands. But usually they are neither. Each is a description of some aspect of how life works. One proverb on marriage, taken all by itself, seems to apply to every instance. A later proverb, however, reveals that there are some marriage situations in which a different…