A Little Sleep, A Little Slumber, A Little Folding of the Hands

Some more thoughts on sloth.....

Proverbs 19:24

"The sluggard buries his hand in the dish and will not even bring it back to his mouth."

This is such a good verse.  It shows just how lazy a sluggard is.  He is sooo lazy (sounds like the making of a joke!) that he won't even bring his hand to his mouth.  I picture a person sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal in front of him, but he can't or won't lift the spoon to feed himself.  He'd rather sit there, 

perhaps waiting for someone to feed him, then lift the food to his mouth.

I never knew how much the Bible spoke on sloth, laziness, being a sluggard until we started to do a small study on it as a family.  It was very convicting.  We realized there was a lot of this in our lives, still is, but we are working on it and at least are much more aware of it.

It is something I was blinded to for a long time.  Who wants to admit to being lazy?  Define lazy!  I could always see myself busy, but perhaps busy is different from lazy.  When I looked back on my life, perhaps in my school work in particular, I did have to admit, I usually always did the bare minimum to get by.  That is definitely a sign of laziness, not having to do anything extra.  

Now I see it in my own kids.  They will literally walk over piles of clothes or toys and they simply don't see them or if they do see them, they won't pick them up!  Why?  It is the inner sloth in all of us.  It means work. It is a constant battle.

Doing that little study was excellent as it helped us all identify the enemy - sloth.  But it also showed the opposite character that we long for - diligence.  We now use the Bibilical terms around our home when we are trying to correct ourselves or our children.  I will literally say to them, "Do not be a sluggard!  Let's show how diligent we can be and get this room cleaned up!"

Sleep is in the Bible a lot.  But often when the Bible speaks to sleep it is in the context of laziness.

Proverbs 6:9

How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep?

Proverbs 26:14

As a door turns on its hinges, so does a sluggard on his bed.

These two verses get me out of bed in the morning.  The second verse in particular - can't you picture it? The sleeping person, literally turning back and forth on his bed, like a hinge, hitting the sleep button over and over again.  The Bible tells us that is being lazy!  Ouch.  No one likes to be called lazy, but the Bible calls us out on all of our excuses.

I think we all think we need more sleep than we really do.  I've been retraining myself to go to bed earlier in order to get up earlier.  That was hard to do!  I never went to bed early as a young person.  I hated going to sleep before 10 pm or even midnight when I was a teen.  I might have missed out on something on TV that would have made me less cool at school the next day!  I was all about cool back then.  What was my problem!!!  Of course the next day I thought I was going to die when it was time to get up.

More recently I was also very afraid if I went to sleep early (as a mom with children), that I would get woken up and then I would lie there for hours not able to go back to sleep.  This has happened in the past, but now, I hit the sheets and I am out!  If I do get woken up, I'm much more able to go back to sleep these days as I think I'm tired enough that it is less of an issue.

Now I go to sleep early, sometimes before my older kids!  If I'm not up talking with my husband (that is the only thing that I'll stay up for), then I'm in bed by 9:30 pm and I might read for a few minutes, but 10 pm is the latest I'll stay up.  That gives me a good 7 hours or more and it must be enough as it has literally allowed me to get out of bed before my alarm wakes me up.  Getting up early has become such a habit, almost annoyingly, that my inner clock knows when it is about to go off.  This has been great though as I know I've had enough sleep.  I'm ready for the kids to come down as I've often had two hours or more on my own before I even see one of them!

Proverbs 6 has become our life passage.  Ever since my husband started his own business, he has been more aware of the struggle between diligence and sloth more than ever as there is now no one in charge of him anymore.  He is his own boss.  That means he can pretty much do whatever he wants, good or bad.  If you are a sloth, no one will know. There were many times in his early days that he would be in his home office where he would feel his eyes getting heavy.  How he longed for a nap!  Of course, it is not sin to nap - I often lay down for a few minutes in the afternoon because I've been up so early, but I'm not lying there for hours!  It is a few minutes!  It gets me by for the rest of the day and it is literally all I need.  But in RM's case, he would often bypass a nap, just for the principle of the matter once he came across this passage.  Read this.....

4 Give your eyes no sleep
    and your eyelids no slumber;
5 save yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter,[b]
    like a bird from the hand of the fowler.

6 Go to the ant, O sluggard;
    consider her ways, and be wise.
7 Without having any chief,
    officer, or ruler,
8 she prepares her bread in summer
    and gathers her food in harvest.
9 How long will you lie there, O sluggard?
    When will you arise from your sleep?
10 A little sleep, a little slumber,
    a little folding of the hands to rest,
11 and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
    and want like an armed man.

I think what I love about this passage is the order it comes in.  So often each passage is presented without the verses surrounding them.  The famous "ant passage" is preceded by a verse on sleep and followed by a verse on sleep!  I had never seen that before.  Remember, I'm not saying it is a sin to sleep, what I'm trying to communicate is the principle these passages are showing - sleep, in the form of laziness, can get you killed like a gazelle by the hunter or like a bird from the fowler.  This is such a great verse as we always like to say we are gazelle intense - that means we are running from laziness, as it could get us killed by debt otherwise!  Isn't that true?  We are being chased by laziness all day long.  Debt and laziness is all tied in together, wouldn't you say?  We are too lazy to be disciplined with our money, so we spend, which ultimately gets us in a lot of trouble.

As RM sat in his office early on in the beginning days of his business struggling to stay awake, these verses convicted him to power through any fatigue he was feeling.  The ant has no overseer and yet she works all summer preparing for the lean times.  He knew he needed to be like the ant.  

The passage that really sums up his whole business is verse 10 and 11, "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man." Wow.  This passage has motivated him like nothing else to press on when exhausted, to know that he will escape poverty and want.  Again, there have been times when he has been up super early prepping for a shipment of heavy steel.  Once it is delivered, sometimes he'll come in and literally throw his exhausted body on the couch and will he nap?  Yes.  I don't see that as laziness.  Remember it is the principle against laziness that the Bible is communicating.  

The Bible has much more to say on this topic.  I'm just scratching the surface.  Gotta run, I've got some ants to wake up!