Read
Proverbs 6
Don’t’ make promises that you can’t
keep, but if you do, beg for forgiveness and to be released from your promise.
Don’t do stupid stuff, but if you do,
find a way to honorably end the mess you have gotten into. Ask for mercy.
If you have gotten yourself into a
mess, then getting yourself out of that mess has become one of your top
priorities.
Don’t get yourself into a mess because
you are lazy. Look at the example of the
ant. It doesn’t have to be ordered
around, yet it works in season to provision itself.
For the ant, work is wisdom. For the sluggard, such wisdom is
elusive. Break the cycle or else suffer
the consequences.
What consequences? Poverty.
Poverty is the fruit of laziness. The one labeled sluggard is the
personification of poverty.
It is hard for me to talk about
poverty without again returning to purpose.
Purpose and poverty are diametrically opposed. Let’s consider them in the context of time. (Adapted
from PoMo Poverty)
So many people can’t pay their bills,
can’t find a job, and have more time on their hands than they know what to do
with. There should be an oxymoron or two
somewhere in that statement.
I have seen a wide range of
reactions—from tears to anger so pronounced that veins were about ready to pop
out of the person’s neck--when I ask someone who is out of work these
questions.
How many hours a week do you want to
work?
The most popular answer is, “I dunno.”
So I respond, “How about 40? That’s something of a traditional work week.”
Usually, the reply is, “Yeah, OK, that
sounds good. Unless I can get some
overtime.”
So I respond, “How much overtime?”
The answer is predictable, “I dunno.”
So I continue with the three questions
for one answer game. “How about 20 hours
overtime?”
“Yeah, OK, that sounds good. Unless I can get more.”
“How much more.”
Don’t laugh. “I dunno.”
“Let’s just say another 10 hours. That makes a total of 40 hours regular time
and 30 hours overtime. That’s 70 hours a
week. Can you handle that?”
“Yes.”
The affirmative answer should not
convey any degree of confidence or commitment.
Usually by this point, people are just getting upset that I haven’t
thrown in the towel and opened the vault of money piled high for people who are
out of work and have become exhausted by trying to figure out how much they
might be willing to work in a week.
It is at this point where people
really don’t like me. I say, “You need
to spend 70 hours a week looking for a job.
Not sitting at home wishing someone would call you with a top-level
executive job, getting off your butt, hitting the pavement, and finding a job.”
The most common response: “Well, I
don’t have time.”
The dichotomy of not having the time
to find a job for which one hopes to work at enough be paid overtime seldom
registers with the unemployed sluggard.
When I say that finding a job is your
job until you are hired, you might think that I had said terrible things about
the family lineage.
This is poverty.
People have plenty of time to dwell in
self-pity.
People have no time to help
themselves.
Working as a counselor with inmates,
most of whom had several years remaining on their sentences, I learned a term
for what so many who live in the poverty of time do. It’s called running your story.
The inmate with years to do and no
place to go will gladly tell you his whole story from the beginning at every
chance—except when it’s time for chow or recreation. He does not value time, especially yours.
It seems that the sluggard also does
not value his time or yours. He has
plenty of time to spend with someone who is doing purposeful things, but none
to spend looking for a job. He has acquired
the art of running his story and values
neither his own time nor the time of others.
Teach us to number our days, that we
may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm
90:12
Each of us is granted 86,400 seconds
in a day.
People of purpose cherish each second.
People of poverty just wait for them
to pass.
People of purpose realize what they
give when they give another person time.
People of poverty neither recognize
what time they have nor what time another is giving.
The paradox is that people who value
time, give it readily for the right reasons.
People, who habitually waste time,
seldom engage in productive endeavors.
They just don’t have the time.
We may have all encountered different
obstacles, painful experiences, or had the break of a lifetime. We don’t all start from the same point. Some are ahead or behind others in wealth,
education, status, and other measurable areas.
But we all are granted the same amount
of time each day.
Purposeful people invest their time.
It is a poverty mindset to waste it.
Want to see the intersection of time
and money in the modern world of poverty?
Go to the convenience store.
Fountain drinks.
Fast food.
Cigarettes.
Energy drinks.
Beer.
And two or three bags of chips.
$35.
That leaves $5 in change. Better get another pack of cigarettes.
Just as well spend it here. The water bill was $52. Didn’t have enough to pay it anyway.
I like convenience stores. They are convenient. There is no grocery store in the town where I
live, so convenience stores save me the $10 in gas and most of an hour in time
to get the one or two items that ran out before my next scheduled trip to the
grocery store.
People become addicted to the
immediate gratification of the convenience store. Many don’t even know how to make a shopping
list. They just go to the convenience
store, and then decide what they need.
Convenience stores are all located at
the same place in the land of the sluggard.
They are at the corner of time and money and are irresistible to those
who do not know how to value either.
Time is money.
Benjamin
Franklin
This part of the chapter is
simple. If you get yourself into a mess,
your first priority is getting out of it.
If you are lazy—the word Solomon chose
was sluggard—then you are on a course to a life of poverty. Follow the basic example of the ant. Work and provide for yourself. Work and save up for later. Work and give no purchase to laziness.
If you are lazy, begin your journey
with this simple mantra—work is wisdom.
Work does not become your God. It is not something to which you should
become addicted. It is your lifeline out
of laziness and your vaccine against poverty.
Work is how you liberate yourself from
laziness. For the one susceptible to laziness, consider the example of the
ant. Work is wisdom.
Amen.
