Sunday ~ Proverbs – Secondary RoadsSecondary Roads

The Bible teaches the value of a work ethic. Here’s a tale of a lesson learned as told in translation and in a modern rendering of a portion of Proverbs 24.

³⁰ I went past the field of the sluggard,
past the vineyard of the man who lacks judgment;

³¹ thorns had come up everywhere,
the ground was covered with weeds,
and the stone wall was in ruins.

³² I applied my heart to what I observed
and learned a lesson from what I saw:

³³ A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest-

³⁴ and poverty will come on you like a bandit
and scarcity like an armed man.

— NIV

One day I walked by the field of an old lazybones,
and then passed the vineyard of a lout;
They were overgrown with weeds,
thick with thistles, all the fences broken down.
I took a long look and pondered what I saw;
the fields preached me a sermon and I listened:
“A nap here, a nap there, a day off here, a day off there,
sit back, take it easy—do you know what comes next?
Just this: You can look forward to a dirt-poor life,
with poverty as your permanent houseguest!”

— The Message.