Walk with the wise and become wise,
    for a companion of fools suffers harm.
- Proverbs 13:20
 
Maybe you’re among the wise. You may not feel like it. You may have a deep awareness of all of the ways in which you need to grow. You may have a sense of how much you don’t know. But if you’ve picked up some wisdom along the way, you might have something vital to share with someone who desperately needs it.
 
Becoming a mentor isn’t easy.
 
We don’t always get to pick the people we mentor. Some of the people we’d like to advise don’t seem all too interested in hearing from us. Some of the people who approach us seeking wisdom need more than we have to give. Sometimes no one calls.
 
Becoming a mentor forces us to grapple with our interior sense of inadequacy. We have to accept that the deposit of wisdom that God has entrusted with us is truly valuable, that it hasn’t been sullied by its association with us, and that another person could benefit from our guidance. This calls forth the courage of true humility: seeing ourselves rightly … not as more than we truly are, but also not as less.
 
You’ve been entrusted with something precious. That pearl of wisdom might sit shining on your shelf for years and years before someone raps on your door and invites you to carry your treasure out into the world, out into the fellowship.
 
What can you be doing today to prepare yourself to share your wisdom with someone who needs it? Can you identify one or two areas in your life where you’ve been given some wisdom? Can you reflect on how you might share that experientially with another person? What kind of work do you need to do before you’ll be ready to share?