“Since I called out and you refused, extended my hand and no one paid attention, since you neglected all my counsel and did not accept my correction, I, in turn, will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when terror strikes you, when terror strikes you like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when trouble and stress overcome you. Then they will call me, but I won’t answer; they will search for me, but won’t find me. Because they hated knowledge, didn’t choose to fear the Lord, were not interested in my counsel, and rejected all my correction, they will eat the fruit of their way and be glutted with their own schemes.” (Proverbs 1:24-31 CSB – Read the chapter)

There’s an old saying about the fury of a scorned lover. When you get all caught up with another person and they reject your advances, the resultant grief will often manifest as a particularly potent form of anger. Through the opening chapters of Proverbs, wisdom is personified as a woman who is eagerly seeking out the company of those who will receive her. She wants to be found and embraced. She wants for her words to be heeded, and for her lovers to enjoy all the sweet fruits that come from a deep and abiding relationship with her. If her advances are rejected, though, all of that passion reverses its direction, and our rejection of her will be matched on at least equal terms. In other words, if we don’t like wisdom, we’ll get what’s coming to us. Let’s talk about it.

Each year somebody—I’m honestly not sure who—releases the Darwin Awards. They are kind of like if America’s Funniest Videos was in written form. Basically, they are compilations of stupid people doing stupid things. We love to laugh at the misfortune of others. I mean, since I already mentioned it, most of the videos on AFV are people getting hurt in one hilarious way after another. In all of this, we share something in common with Solomon’s anthropomorphism of wisdom. When people don’t take her counsel and pay for it, she laughs right in the face of their misfortune.

“Since I called out and you refused, extended my hand and no one paid attention, since you neglected all my counsel and did not accept my correction, I, in turn, will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when terror strikes you, when terror strikes you like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when trouble and stress overcome you. Then they will call me, but I won’t answer; they will search for me, but won’t find me.”

When you have been given good advice along with a warning about what will happen if you don’t take, you don’t take it anyway, and then the consequences of not taking it come due, whoever gave you that advice is going to have a pretty hard time feeling very badly for you. When God Himself is the one who calls us through wisdom to the path that is going to be the best and wisest to take through life, warns us of the consequences of heading off in a different direction, and we ignore Him and do it anyway, He’s just not going to feel very badly for us.

How many people, I wonder, have rejected God’s instructions, and then gotten angry with Him for the trouble they cause themselves by rejecting His instructions? When God tells us to honor our father and mother so that we will be able to enjoy a long and happy life, but we refuse to do that and wind up with a much harder road through life, whose fault is that? When He tells us that living with the truth in all things will result in the most peace, but we insist on letting a few lies take root which eventually grow to become terribly destructive, should we blame Him for that? Perhaps a review of this passage is necessary to give us some fresh context on how we should consider moving forward.

The trouble here is that some people seem absolutely determined to only learn the hard way. You can tell them what’s right all you like, but until they have tested and found out for themselves, they are not going to accept instruction or counsel. This is a kind of spiritual pride that lies in all of our hearts, and if we are not careful to keep it tightly in check, it can grow wildly out of control very quickly.

If we take that path, we shouldn’t expect to find wisdom on it. As wisdom continues her complaint here, she makes clear why that is: “Because they hated knowledge, didn’t choose to fear the Lord, were not interested in my counsel, and rejected all my correction, they will eat the fruit of their way and be glutted with their own schemes.” In other words and again, they decided to only learn the hard way, and so learn the hard way they shall.

There are times in the Scriptures when we see God take decisive and dramatic action to bring judgment against sin and the sinners who have committed it. But more often, we see Him just step back and let the natural consequences of sin be their own judgment. Yes, this lack of action is still attributed to Him as an action by the various authors, but His action is to not take any direct action. It is to let things run their course. Sin is destructive stuff. If we let it loose in our lives, rejecting God’s many, many calls to walk the path of righteousness, that destructive potential is going to be unleashed. Maybe it won’t come right away, but it will come. About that we should have no doubt.

And when it comes, expecting God to help us clean up the mess we made by turning from Him to our own way seems a bit silly, doesn’t it? Here, though, is where the wonder of the Gospel of grace comes rushing into the foreground. When we have sinned, refused to heed wisdom’s call, and landed ourselves in a grand mess of our own making, if we will repent and return to our heavenly Father who loves us without condition, He will forgive us. Indeed, in Christ He already has. He will help us up, dust us off, and help us bear the consequences that have landed on us like a ton of bricks. If we will turn to Him when we are fully within the midst of our mess, He will work to bring Gospel redemption to our broken circumstances to create something beautiful out of them. He can and will bring beauty to our ashes, making what was broken beautiful once again.

If you have been walking a path of foolishness and are starting to experience the natural consequences of your choices, you are not a lost cause as far as God is concerned. Stop your progress in the wrong direction, turn around with a heart of repentance, and go to God through Jesus. You will be received and made whole once again. The wounds and scars from your sin may still be there, but He can redeem those and make them part of the story of grace you will one day share with others about the goodness of God, perhaps helping them to go to Him before they experience the full weight of the brokenness that you did. In other words, He will turn your story of brokenness into a story of redemption. Those are always the very best stories. Turn to Him and let your story become one of redemption and grace. You’ll be glad that you did.