The Message of Proverbs : Wisdom for Life

Despite the centuries which separate us from the authors of these proverbs, the everyday realities of human existence remain: making friends, coping with sexuality, handling money, responding to poverty, making a living, learning through loss, muddling through difficulties, facing death.David Atkinson shows how Proverbs addresses all these issues. Wisdom, he argues, is about helping to cope; about seeing the world in a fresh way to five new resources for living; about working out what living for God means in the very ordinariness of daily life.These sayings, he explains, bring such concerns to life in vivid, imaginative, often humorous pictures, linking the cosmic and the homely. The ancient book puts a mirror up to our behaviour, and asks: 'Are you like this Is there not a better way to live'

Atkinson is retired as assistant bishop in Southwark Diocese. Previously, he served as fellow of Corpus Christi College in Oxford, England, archdeacon of Lewisham and bishop of Thetford. He is the author of several other books and commentaries.