Proverbs 30 is the only chapter in the book attributed to Agur son of Jakeh, a sage outside Solomon's line whose words were preserved in Israel's wisdom collection. Agur is unusual: he opens by confessing he has not learned wisdom and does not know the Holy One (30:2-3). His audience is anyone who has tried to live by their own competence and run out of it. The prayer in verses 7-9 is the only direct petition in Proverbs, and it is breathtakingly modest. A man who knows his own heart asks God to keep him from the two conditions most likely to undo him.

From the writers we read together

Teresa of Ávila

Spanish Carmelite reformer and mystic (1515-1582), author of The Interior Castle

Teresa reformed a monastic order that had grown comfortable. She watched what comfort did to prayer — how a slightly larger cell, a slightly better meal, a slightly easier rule slowly hollowed out the life of the soul. Her insistence on poverty was not romantic; it was clinical. She had seen what abundance does to attentiveness. Agur's prayer would have been familiar to her: lest I be full and deny you. Teresa would have nodded. The fullness she feared most was not the stomach's but the self's — the quiet conviction that one no longer needs.

And yet Teresa was equally honest about the other danger. In The Way of Perfection she warns her sisters that grinding want can crowd out God as effectively as luxury. The mind locked on the next meal cannot pray. This is exactly Agur's lest I be poor and steal. The petition is not for the middle as a virtue; it is for whatever measure keeps the heart oriented. Teresa would call us back to the bookmark: God alone suffices. Ask for the portion that lets you believe that, and let the rest go.