Sluggard

Depending on your upbringing and various factors within your adulthood, you may have a distorted picture of what it means to be lazy. You may, for instance, define laziness as taking a nap, or sitting down for a few minutes after you’ve completed a project. Individuals with distorted pictures of that nature often put themselves under enormous pressure, and are usually pretty hard to get along with.

This morning I ran across an interesting definition of laziness—or, to be more precise, for a sluggard.

The sluggard doesn’t plow when the season is right for plowing.

There is a time for everything. There is a time for taking a nap, quite frankly. There is a time for sitting down for a few minutes. There is a time for sleeping, for relaxing, for putting one’s whole self into enjoyment. There is also a time to plow, a time to plant, and a time to harvest. It isn’t laziness to rest when the time for resting is here. In fact, if you don’t rest when you should rest, you will experience burn-out. But if you are resting when you should be plowing, you will have nothing to eat when it comes time to harvest.

Perhaps we could say that this is a huge portion of what is defined as wisdom: knowing the right time to do a certain thing, being prepared for that time, and then doing what needs to be done at the right time. Interestingly enough, however, the Bible also says that a sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven reasonable men. He can’t go out into the street, because there may be a lion there. Well, duh! Possible dangers do in fact lurk around every corner, but that won’t prevent a wise man from doing what needs to be done, at the right time.

A possible danger is the only reason necessary to convince a lazy person to do nothing.

This is true in many areas, I have found. For instance, if a person is lazy about giving, they’ll talk about corruption in ministries, and how these people to whom folk give their money are living high on the hog. They find that a perfectly reasonable excuse to give nothing, and then they whine about how nothing goes right for them. A wise person, on the other hand, will look for a trustworthy place to give their money, knowing that no ministry or organization is perfect, and will then give, and later reap a lovely harvest.

Let’s face it: sitting back and waiting for all the conditions to be perfect may be called "perfectionism, but in reality, it would be more accurately called "laziness. If you really want to do a thing, you’ll look for ways and means to do it; you won’t look for excuses to not do it.

If I know what needs to be done, and that now is the best time to do it, and I don’t do it, I’m being lazy. Period.

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