Wisdom is not quick to announce herself. More often, she waits. She abides in stillness, and in that stillness she is not idle. There are times when victory is not seized or proclaimed, but given quietly, carried on the back of silence and received only by those who have learned how to remain.
She comes at hours least expected. Not when the mind is loud with intention, nor when the will presses forward demanding answer, but when the heart has softened enough to yield. It is then—when striving loosens its grip—that her presence becomes known. Not suddenly, and not with force, but as something that had been near all along and has now chosen to speak.
Her arrival is not always sweet. She does not always bring what pleases the tongue. There are other visitations that come bearing honey—smooth and warm, passing easily between the lips, inviting return, leaving behind the comfort of fullness without the weight of understanding. Wisdom does not offer herself in this way. At times, the portion she sets before us is scarcely enough for a taste. The plate is placed gently, almost hesitantly, and what it holds leaves the hunger awake and the questions unanswered.
This unsettles those who cannot wait. For the busy and the restless, delay has no acceptable form. Stillness feels empty to them, and silence reads as absence. They do not regard wisdom as necessary in such moments, but as something incomplete—an answer yet unfinished, one they must complete themselves from intention and inward thought. So they rise before she speaks fully, shaping conclusions by their own design, mistaking motion for resolve.
That refusal of surrender often satisfies, briefly. There is comfort in action taken, in decisions made swiftly, in the feeling of control restored. Yet what is formed without patience seldom reveals its cost at once. Only later, in the quieter seasons of reflection, do the outcomes show their weight—when the consequences of haste can no longer be revised, only understood.
But there are others who remain. Those whose hearts have not hardened against waiting. Those whose minds can bear the discomfort of delay without rushing to fill it. They do not strain against stillness, nor do they demand that silence justify itself. They recline within it, attentive, aware that something purposeful rests there, even if its shape is not yet known.
To these, wisdom offers her truest gift. Not immediacy, but clarity. Not escape from delay, but guidance through it. She teaches them that waiting is not empty space, but a field where discernment is formed. In time, she grants them a resolve shaped not by urgency, but by depth—one that carries weight enough to endure, and truth enough to remain.
© 2026 Steven Scott. All Rights Reserved.
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