Making sound financial decision is
critical to a peaceful and meaningful life. In the first five verses of
Proverbs 6, one way to ensure that we are not trapped in undue financial entanglement
is never to stand as a surety for anyone. In verses 6-11 the teacher turns to deal
with the issue of laziness that lead a person into disaster and ruin. A lazy person is referred to as a sluggard. Two
things the sluggard ought to do: firstly, he should learn a lesson from the
ant. There are lessons on wisdom that the ants can teach the naïve. Ants are farsighted
and industrious. Though they are not pressurised by ruthless rulers or cruel
taskmasters, they work relentlessly. They store up provision for themselves in summer
and harvest time so that they will have food during winter. The point is this:
even the ants have foresight. Their natural impulse made them prepare for the
future. They truly have much more sense than that of a sluggard.
Secondly, the slothful must not let
their laziness get a better of them. They must learn to get up early and be up
and about by daybreak. Sleeping long
into the waking hour of the day is seen as a serious character flaw. The
slothful is always pleading for a little more time for rest and to laze around
in ease. When laziness becomes a habit, that’s hard to break. The reason why we
need to be hard working and diligent is because poverty and want have a way of
catching up with us. They are likened to soldiers that come, invade and ravage
a town. A slothful person will find no way to escape poverty.
In verses 12-15, the teacher turns
to advice against living a worthless life. It is a life full of deceits and
treacheries. A life of mischief and a life of a sluggard will have similar ending
i.e. destruction. In verse 12, a mischievous person is briefly described. Outwardly,
he lacks moral character and goes about devising evil to harm and injure others.
He walks about with a perverse mouth that spreads falsehood. He is full of
craftiness and deceit. What he spews out of his mouth will reveal what controls
his inner thoughts. The winking of the eyes, the signalling with the feet, the
pointing of the finger are all indications of using the different parts of the
body to devise evil.
Inwardly, a person of mischief is dominated by evil thoughts.
His heart is filled with jealousy and malicious intentions and continuously devise
evil. Besides, he is one who has no qualm to spread strives but finds great pleasure
in breaking up a friendship, a relationship or a marriage. The teacher warns
that ultimately, such a person will have to face the consequences of his evil.
Similar to a sluggard, a mischief-maker will end in ruin. Just as he thinks
that he is succeeding with his evil scheme, retribution comes upon him unexpectedly.
He will be broken like a shattered pot and he will end up hopelessly. We must
take the warnings of these verses seriously. Let’s be the good man whom the
Psalmist describes, whose steps are ordered of the Lord. He is one that Psalm 1
said, “whose delight is in the law of the Word of the Lord and upon it he
meditates day and night”. Let’s be that
man or woman!
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