Be Still And Know

Proverbs 26:14 As a door swings back and forth on its hinges, so the lazy person turns over in bed. The writer of the Proverbs has a great deal to say about laziness, and he is terrified of it. He sees it as the surest route to poverty and, in a society without a welfare state, that could easily spell starvation and even death. Fighting the war against laziness starts at the very beginning of the day when we decide to stop turning over in bed and actually get up! Laziness will try to lure us into its trap if it possibly can. A Latin proverb says: “As worms breed in a pool of stagnant water, so evil thoughts breed in the mind of the idle.” I don’t believe that there is anything wrong with times of relaxation. The problem that the writer of the Proverbs identifies is that without a clear sense of direction and purpose, evil thoughts can take root and breed. CH Spurgeon, the famous Victorian Baptist preacher, wrote: “Some temptations come to the industrious, but all temptations attack the idle.” Laziness i