AVOIDING LAZINESS

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

I went past the field of a sluggard, past the vineyard of someone who has no sense; thorns had come up everywhere, the ground was covered with weeds, and the stone wall was in ruins.

I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw:

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man.

Proverbs 24:30-34        

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

I grew up with two parents who never ceased to work hard to provide for their family and as I moved into adulthood, I was grateful to have them as role models as I had to form my own work ethic in life. I can honestly say as I write today that I have carried on their legacy of hard work and have learned something else from my own experiences.

Success comes through the level of effort and devotion you put into what you do. In other words, what you put into something will determine what you get out of it. Maximum effort and dedication will lead a person to maximum results.

My concern in our society today is that we are losing our grip on hard work. We seem to be ever more a people who want things to come to us the easy way, unwilling to labor with a sense of initiative and fire toward accomplishing things for ourselves and others. We are trending more toward laziness than enterprise and endeavor

Of course, the word of God always has something timely to say about any issues of life and as we look at the final verses of Proverbs, Chapter 24, we see that this does apply to the matter of lethargy over resourcefulness. Look at these words of Solomon:

I went past the field of a sluggard, past the vineyard of someone who has no sense; thorns had come up everywhere, the ground was covered with weeds, and the stone wall was in ruins.

I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw:

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man.  Proverbs 24:30-34

Here we have the testimony of someone, perhaps Solomon himself, who had gone past the field of someone who was lazy referred to here as a sluggard. Note that this sluggard was tagged with the label of being without sense. How else would you describe someone who had a perfectly good field and property and yet had not shown any effort to keep it up?

Thorns had come up everywhere and the ground was covered with weeds. It was untenable land, land that had so much potential if it would just be developed. Ironic how the same thing could be said about the sluggard, how they were wasting so much of their potential while opting for inactivity and slothfulness. The ground will not produce crops if not worked and land that doesn’t produce crop will not produce income either. No one gets ahead by being lazy. In fact, as we look at the scripture for today, we see the word of the Lord warn us that falling into a sluggard-like attitude in life will result in poverty and scarcity. In other words, no investment of effort will result in no return. It’s a zero in, zero out model.

Now, many people will think this is not applicable to them. They will say that they have steady work and do all they can to succeed in their work and provide for themselves and their families. They would not feel anywhere close to being compared to a sluggard.

But what if this was about much more than just a worldly, labor-related standpoint? Maybe this is to be extended to the spiritual side of life as well.

Of course, if we do this, then so much more comes into play, doesn’t it? For we begin to look at our initiative in a far greater light than just laboring to make a wage. We look at it in regard to saving souls, for laboring for the cause of the Gospel that Jesus called us all to share with others (Matthew 28:18-20).  

Just in case you think I’m not going down the right path here, consider the words of Jesus Himself on the matter:

“He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field.” Matthew 9:37-38

Do we do this? Do we pray daily for the Lord of the harvest to send out His workers into the harvest field? Do we even respond to His call ourselves and work in the harvest field every day? Does Jesus see us a disciple who proactively shares the good news or simply a sluggard, too lazy to be obedient and sacrifice our time and talent to others and the One who gave us His everything?

Friends, we would be well served to think about this and think about it hard. The call here is to avoid laziness so we don’t fall into physical poverty, spiritual poverty, or both. It’s high time we draw our cue for initiative from the One, Jesus our Savior, who was perfectly so.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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