"Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it." The verb behind "start off" carries the sense of initiating, opening a path, setting a course — the way you would begin a journey you expect someone to keep walking long after you have stopped walking with them. The proverb is not a formula that guarantees outcomes. It is a wise observation about how deeply early formation reaches, and any parent who has done it faithfully and still watched a child wander knows it cannot be read as a contract. Proverbs deal in patterns, not promises.
So what is "the way they should go"? In this book, the way is a direction before it is a rule. It is the way of wisdom, and wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord — a settled reverence that makes room for God before we make our plans. Which means the very first thing a child is started on is not good behaviour but a posture: the habit of turning toward God and asking.
That is where hasty words and hasty decisions get their cure. Most of what I regret saying, I said fast. Most of what I regret deciding, I decided without once stopping to ask. The way of wisdom is slower than that. It assumes we do not already know, and it treats asking not as an embarrassment but as the ordinary rhythm of a life lived before God. James says it plainly: if any of us lacks wisdom, we should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault. Not to the impressive. Not to the well-prepared. To anyone who asks.
Which is worth remembering when the asking has to be directed at a person rather than only at heaven. Bryan had been started on prayer and Scripture, and when the floor gave way, asking was still available to him — asking God, and asking a friend, and then asking a doctor. A path like that, laid early, holds a long time.
💡Wisdom
Started on the Way
Wisdom is not a reward for the wise; it is a gift for anyone who asks.
October 26, 20265 min readNIV
Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.
— Proverbs 22:6 (NIV)
Proverbs of Solomon
Today's Story
📖True Story
Bryan Ng was keeping two schedules at once. At a competitive Singapore secondary school he was trying to hold his place in his classes and in his athletic training, and the cost showed up at night. He was not sleeping. His mood sank, anxiety pressed in on him through the day, and he kept going anyway, because that was what the timetable asked of him.
The pressure did not lift when he moved into National Service. It changed shape. Around friends and family he found it hard to say how much he was struggling, so he said very little. He prayed. He read Scripture. Those were things he had been given, and he used them.
Then came a harder recognition, and it took real honesty. Spiritual support alone did not answer every need. A friend encouraged him to see a psychologist, who in turn referred him to a psychiatrist. The diagnosis was dysthymia and anxiety, and he was given treatment and medical leave. Further along the road, sleep apnea was found, and he underwent surgery for it.
"I felt like I had no right to be depressed" — that was the shape of it, the sense that his circumstances were too good to complain about, that someone with his opportunities ought to have been able to manage.
What helped was not one thing. Counselling. Journalling. Medication. Church leaders who stood with him. In time he returned to National Service in a lower-stress role. This is not the story of a single dramatic cure but of a man put back on his feet by a long chain of ordinary means.
And when he looked back, Bryan described professional help, Christian community and study as channels through which he experienced God's care. Not one channel only. Not the prayer instead of the psychiatrist, nor the psychiatrist instead of the prayer. The God he had been praying to was at work in all of them.
SOURCE: “I felt like I had no right to be depressed”: Former student athlete from elite school who struggled with anxiety (Carmen Chia, Salt&Light, 2024) / https://saltandlight.sg/faith/i-felt-like-i-had-no-right-to-be-depressed-former-student-athlete-from-elite-school-who-struggled-with-anxiety/
Source citation: “I felt like I had no right to be depressed”: Former student athlete from elite school who struggled with anxiety (Carmen Chia, Salt&Light, 2024) / https://saltandlight.sg/faith/i-felt-like-i-had-no-right-to-be-depressed-former-student-athlete-from-elite-school-who-struggled-with-anxiety/
Reflection
Think About It
• Who started you on the way you are walking now, and what did they actually teach you about God — by their words, or by how they handled their own hard decisions? • Think of a decision you made quickly in the past month. What would it have cost you to pause and ask God out loud before you made it? • Is there something you have been reluctant to ask for — from God, or from another person — because you felt you had no right to need it?
Prayer
Father, I ask. Father, I ask. Father, I ask — for wisdom, for help, for the next step, plainly and without dressing it up. You have said that You give generously to all who ask and do not find fault with them, so I am asking out loud, and then sitting still long enough to be answered. I believe You are not irritated by my need but glad to meet it. I believe the way You start a person on is a way of asking, all the way home. Jesus, I trust You. Jesus, I trust You. Jesus, I trust You. Amen.
Live It Out
Before one decision today — a message you need to send, a yes or no you have been putting off — pause, ask God for wisdom out loud, and then wait in silence for a moment before you proceed.