In Search Of Wisdom

#1 New York Times bestselling author Joyce Meyer takes us on a journey through the wisdom of Proverbs that leaves us transformed and prepared to face daily choices and challenges. The book of Proverbs is a treasure trove of spiritual and practical wisdom that equips us to live our best lives. Knowledge is important, but if it isn't converted into action, it fails to create transformational change in our lives. It is important to gain a thoughtful and practical understanding of the seven foundational principles in the book of Proverbs: Wisdom, Understanding, Prudence, Knowledge, Discretion, Discernment, and Fear of the Lord. If we desire to possess these qualities, we must make a commitment to a deeper understanding and implementation of these values in our daily lives. Featuring inspiring questions to promote thoughtful reflection, In Search of Wisdom will enlighten you with God's understanding and teach you the foundational principles and secure God's help in practicing them.

This volume brings together essays written over two decades by a leading authority in the field. The collection includes 2 recent essays that are published here for the first time. The articles cover major aspects of the discussion of Jewish apocalypticism, in relation to the Hebrew bible, the New Testament and the Hellenistic-Roman world. Distinctive strengths of the volume include clusters of essays on the Sibylline oracles and on the relationship between apocalypticism and wisdom. A section of the book is devoted to studies on Daniel. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

Concerned that American Catholic theology has struggled to find its own voice for much of its history, William Portier has spent virtually his entire scholarly career recovering a usable past for Catholics on the U.S. landscape. This work of ressourcement has stood at the intersection of several disciplines and has unlocked the beauty of American Catholic life and thought. These essays, which are offered in honor of Portier's life and work, emerge from his vision for American Catholicism, where Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience are distinct, but interwoven and inextricably linked with one another. As this volume details, such a path is not merely about scholarly endeavors but involves the pursuit of holiness in the "real" world.

Ancient cultures, such as that of the Hebrews, commonly associated wisdom with advanced years. In A Biblical Theology of Gerassapience the author investigates the validity of this correlation through an eclectic approach - including linguistic semantic, tradition-historical, and socio-anthropological methods - to pertinent biblical and extra-biblical texts. There are significant variations in the estimation of gerassapience (or «old-age wisdom») in each period of ancient Israel's life - that is, in pre-monarchical, monarchical, and post-monarchical Israel. Throughout this study, appropriate cross-cultural parallels are drawn from the cultures of ancient Israel's neighbors and of modern societies, such as the West African Yoruba tribe. The overall results are bi-dimensional. On the one hand, there are semantic elements of gerassapience, such as the elusiveness of «wisdom» and the mild fluidity of «old age». Both terms have strong contextual affinity with minimal exceptions. Thus, the attribution of wisdom to old age is evident but not absolute in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). On the other hand, gerassapience is depicted as primarily didactic, through direct and indirect instructions and counsels of the elderly, fostering the saging fear-of-Yahweh legacies. On the whole, socio-anthropocentric tendencies of gerassapience (that is, of making old age a repertoire of wisdom) are checked by theological warrants of theosapience (Yahwistic wisdom). Therefore, in the Hebrew Bible, the fear of Yahweh is also the beginning of growing old and wise.

This much-needed volume provides a comprehensive study of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible, in selected intertestamental and Rabbinic texts, and in the New Testament. Seventeen essays by leading scholars--including Joseph Blenkinsopp, Carole R. Fontaine. Michael V. Fox, Richard Horsley, David Winston, and Tina Pippin--help students identify and understand the presence of wisdom in the Bible and related literature.

At the height of his career as a journalist, Tony Schwartz hit an unexpected wall. Why did success suddenly feel so empty? How could he add richer meaning to his everyday life? What guides could he trust on the road to wisdom? During the next five years his search for answers took him from a meditation retreat in the mountains of Utah to a biofeedback laboratory in Kansas, from a peak-performance workshop at a tennis academy in Florida to a right-brain drawing course in Boston. Blending the hunger of a seeker with a journalist's hard-headed inquiry, he discovered the best teachers and techniques for inner development--and identified the potential pitfalls and false gurus he met along the way. What he found dramatically changed his life. It may change yours as well.

The late Dr. Nass Cannon Jr. (MD) was a physician for the indigent poor for over forty years and an internationally renowned scholar of the theologian and monk, Thomas Merton. In Search of the Healing Spirit follows a narrative arc across several essays of Dr. Cannon’s analysis and reflections on life and Thomas Merton’s theological contributions. First articulated by Dr. Cannon at the outset of his journey to serve the poor, the guiding principle of the book is an exploration of what it means to be broken and called to heal each other, ourselves, and the world. As Dr. Cannon writes, “I am a physician who views his root identity as one called to heal. Yet, I experience myself as broken, as one admonished by the phrase, ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ Perhaps you, too . . . experience yourself as a broken healer. Let us together explore some notions regarding the healer as broken, examine the nature of healing, and consider the relationship of the healer to one healed.” From this position as a broken healer, which implicitly embodies Merton’s contemplative spirituality, Dr. Cannon’s meditations over the course of his life of service increasingly weave in Merton’s contributions in search of the true self on such pressing—and universal—topics as grief and loss, the eternal nature and healing power of love, and to do what we can for each other with the time we are given. Dr. Cannon’s writings engage a twenty-first-century audience with insights—drawn from fifty years of study—that can aid lay persons, clergy, and academics to better understand what it means to be a broken person and through that brokenness to heal themselves and the world.