A Deep Sleep – Proverbs in Practice

Ever slept so hard, former procrastinators, you just couldn’t seem to wake up?  It’s as if you’re glued to the pillow and the mattress and your eyelids are glued shut.  It takes a very deliberate act of the will to pull those eyes slightly open and to maybe utter a low groan.  Sitting up is major labor.

That picture can help us grasp this week’s proverb.

“Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger.”  Proverbs 19:15

When we’re in a deep sleep we’re unaware of what’s going on around us.  We are non-participants in what’s going on.  If we’re needed, we’re not present.  Things develop without the action, ideas, faithfulness to truth we should’ve contributed.

Failure to recognize laziness in ourselves leads to more slothfulness.  It becomes easier and easier to neglect what needs doing.  Sleep becomes deeper.

When we repeatedly put off, delay becomes our default position, and we don’t even notice.  We just naturally delay everything that comes along.  “Just a minute” when a child calls but we could go. “Not now, Lord” when He prompts us. “Maybe later” when a project is proposed.  Get dressed later, stay up later.  Delaying anything can become a habit that we get mired up in.

We feel glued to inaction.  It feels so hard to change or we’ve fallen out of practice.  Meeting with the Lord, asking forgiveness, showing kindness, demonstrating grace, speaking up for truth.

The hunger suffered can be literal where we have growling stomachs for lack of food.  Or the hunger can be a picture of something else we lack by failing to tend to what needs our attention.  A house so messy we don’t want anybody to visit, lack of preparation for a test, a committee decision that’s unwise.

The habit of delay blinds us to our ways. We can put off facing truth about ourselves or something else.  Alexander Pope wrote about how evil takes control when we are slow to address it properly.  If we act “sleepy” about wrong, we become comfortable with it – personally, at home, at church, in the community.

“Vice is a monster of such frightful mien
As to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

Have we become sleepy about what we watch on TV or read? About how we spend our time?  About current events?  About caring for neighbors?  About prayer?

What’s a “sleepy” area in your life where you need to wake up and take action?