Mar 26 - Today from Proverbs 26 we look at verses 13 & 15
"The sluggard says, "There is a lion in the road, a fierce lion roaming the streets! The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth."
A virtuous person is an industrious person. So what is a sluggard? If you were to look up the original Hebrew in Strong's, you would discover the root word means 'to lean'. A shovel leaning against a building is non-industrious. A man leaning on a shovel is non-industrious. Leaning brings to mind a picture of idleness, and the sluggard is the epitome of idleness.
Peter Putz was an adolescent who just couldn't get a break. Every time his parents got a lead on a job for him, the day Peter was to go for an interview there was 'a lion in the road' (vs. 13), and Peter couldn't venture out. Now everyone knew there was no lion in the road. Peter thought he was clever, but the only one he was fooling was himself. At one time or another, we all know a Peter Putz. They may not use the lion excuse, but their excuses are just as outrageous. They only fool themselves.
One day, one of those days when there was a lion in the road and he was confined to his home, Peter got hungry. He whined to his mother to feed him. Mother fixed him a dish of goulash and set it before him. Peter put his spoon into the meal, but he was so depressed about the lion in the road which he knew wasn't there, that he couldn't lift his hand to his mouth. He just sat and whined about how hungry he was. Poor Peter Putz. Life was so terribly unfair.
Opportunities are there for all. There are plenty of shovels leaning against buildings all over the landscape. All one needs is an industrious attitude. It is the same with our emotional and spiritual life. We have issues and conflicts which tend to emotionally drain us and right there on the desk, the coffee table, the night stand. . . lays our Bible. We bury our hand in it and never bring it back to our mouth. The Bible is of no value just in our hand. We must ingest it. We have to meditate on it and get the life-giving spiritual nutrition it holds into our hearts. We can spiritually starve to death with our hand buried in the bread of life. We need to be industrious in our relationship with God and our quest to better know and understand Him.
It's difficult to pity a sluggard. They have everything they need except the will to use it.
Since Nov 08
About Me
- Ken
- While mentor-ing a couple of young men late in the year 2001 , I told them that if they agreed to read a chapter of Proverbs each week-day as a part of their devotions, I would choose one verse from the chapter and share a meditation by email. They agreed. I continued to write the meditations at my desk in my home for the next two and a half years. They began to forward them to their friends and I received requests from those friends to be placed on the email list. My personal email bundle was to about eighty people. Many of those people forwarded them to friends all over the country – and some over the world. Only the Lord knows how extensive the writings traveled. I am not a professional writer, and each meditation was spun off in a relatively short period of time during my own personal devotions in the morning. In April of 2004 I assembled 366 of the meditations into a calendar year. As I now bring up the Proverb of the Day to send on to my friends, I am surprised at how fresh each of them is to my own heart – and often how they speak to me in a completely different way than when I first wrote them. . . . . Ken Sweers
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