Money Wisdom from Proverbs

Proverbs 26: 13-14 The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets. 14As the door turneth upon his hinges, so doth the slothful upon his bed.

More excuses from the sluggard. This answer is similar to the man who says it is too cold to plow in the Spring. That man will go begging at harvest. This is similar but not the same. This man says, “A lion!” It has all the plausibility of real danger. There may indeed be a lion in the streets but this man does not actually know if there is one or not. Why not? Because he is on his bed trying to get comfortable for a few more hours of sleep.

My old pastor, Doug Wilson, was fond of saying that whenever you get to work, you’ve got work problems. If you pastor a church, you’ve got church problems. If you are doing math, you’ve got math problems. Whenever work is embraced, you have problems. Saying that there are problems associated with your work is just another creative (not very) way of saying, “I don’t want to work.”

This sort of thing is commonly used as an excuse. But it ought not to be received as an excuse, either from your workmates or your children. You don’t want to hear about problems, you want to hear solutions.

The slothful man says, “There is a lion in the streets.” But the diligent man says, “We’ve got to get to the worksite. Somebody bring your gun to kill that lion.”