Proverbs 31:27. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.
This book has already issued numerous warnings about idleness.
Proverbs 13:4. The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing.
Proverbs 19:15. Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger.
Proverbs 21:25. The desire of the sluggard kills him, for his hands refuse to labor.
Why is idleness so bad? Well, as the verses above reveal, the idle person is destroying themselves. Literally hunger and death can be the result of laziness. Proverbs 13:4 expands the issue beyond just physical needs to the whole life cravings of the soul. Nothing the sluggard craves will come to pass. Why not? Because good things don’t just magically happen to us. They take effort to be realized.
Not only does our idleness harm us personally, but it also harms the entire community. Laziness is destructive to a business, a community, a family, a church. Simply put idleness is not loving.
Proverbs 18:9. Whoever is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys.
Being in Christ and under the New Covenant does not soften the warnings against idleness at all.
2 Thessalonians 3:10-12. 10For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. 11For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. 12Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.
Ephesians 4:28. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
What the author of Proverbs 31 knows, and what Paul knows, and what we must learn is that idleness is not just a personal problem with personal consequences, it is a communal problem with communal effects. If God loves humanity and cares for humanity through humanity, through human resourcefulness, hard work, and productivity, if God supplies our needs through the diligence of one another, the producing, the sharing, the selling, then our laziness is a violation of God’s good and glorious creative order.
We live in a culture that demands that pleasure precede hard work. “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” OK, sure. But what if I stop loving it? What if I never really get the chance to do what I really want to do? What if I feel stuck in my vocation? The Christian answer is that we do our work as unto the Lord. Pleasure follows hard work; it doesn’t precede it. All hard work is honorable. All production is respectable. And consumption without production was never how we were made to live.
In the end the answer is that any vocation can be worship and all work is an act of love. Therefore, the answer is not “do what you love,” the answer is do what you do from the love of God and for the love of others. The excellent woman understood this. She made clothes for others. She bought land to produce wine to sell to others. She gave to the poor and needy. Her hard work allowed her husband to rule in the city council. Nowhere does it say that she loved doing all these things, but it is clear that she loved others and so she did all these things. May it be even more true for those who are in Christ.
You: Where and when do you struggle the most with idleness?
You in Christ: In what ways does the love of Christ heal us of laziness?
Christ in you: Where do you need to reject laziness and embrace hard work from love of God and others?
Pray: Father, if I don’t love my work, let me love my fellow man enough to work. Amen.
To Live is Christ 