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January 1 - December 31, 2018
false modesty, which is a not-so-subtle way of promoting oneself as particularly humble. Jesus turns Proverbs’ advice against social climbing into an attitude toward all of life (Luke 14:7–11). True modesty is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. We should not even notice where we are in the pecking order but should simply be looking to serve those around us.
He says he doesn’t know God, but that very statement is a mark of spiritual awakening. Those who are confident they know God well don’t. Those who cry that they don’t know him at all have begun to do so. Sometimes a keen sense of God’s absence is a sign that he is actually drawing us closer to him.
The irony is that pride, which hates correction, inevitably leads to public failures that bring shame, a translation of a Hebrew word that means to be taken lightly. So human arrogance brings about its own greatest nightmare.
. is his own trumpet,” writes Shakespeare, “and whatever praised itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise.”
When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers. . . .
when the love of pleasurable physical sensation dominates, it is the deadly sin of “gluttony.” Today this word means only overeating, but traditionally it meant the inability to live a life of delayed gratification.
Indeed, doing justice often involves the sacrifice of one’s comforts and pleasure. For example, to give generously to the poor deprives you of wealth, which can bring physical comforts.
The great mistake of gluttony is to seek happiness directly rather than as a by-product of living responsibly. “The pleasure-lover strikes out towards joy itself, and finds poverty (17).”119
Overcoming addiction is never simple and takes a lifetime. But St. Paul was right when he pointed to the ultimate consolation we need. “Do not get drunk on wine. . . . Instead be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18).
Dorothy Sayers defines “sloth” as “the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for.”123
Lazy people do not love life enough to work hard to enjoy more of it, and they don’t love people enough to work hard so they can—as the righteous can—give without sparing (21:26).
Do you work only out of a sense of duty or in order to gain and serve things you love?
SLOTH DOESN’T FINISH THINGS. When we think of a lazy person, we think of someone who doesn’t start things. But there is also a kind of person who is always making plans and always starting but never finishing any project. They don’t stay at jobs long, and they always blame the job itself rather than their own lack of stick-to-it-iveness. Either they lose interest because of a lack of inner passion for anything (May 26) or they have failed to count the cost and so find themselves overwhelmed.
SLOTH DOESN’T NOTICE THINGS.
One of the marks of a lazy character is that he demands his own schedule. He is too self-absorbed to notice windows of opportunity that, once closed, are gone forever.
There is nothing comforting about the fact that everything in this world changes and passes away. Because God has “set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11), constant changes are a grief to us. But the lazy heart will not come to grips with this and work hard (or rest) at the right moment.
the slothful think of themselves first, even in the work they choose to do. They select work for their own comfort or benefit rather than for how it helps others, the community, and society.
Dorothy Sayers observed that during World War II many people in the military found themselves doing work that was vastly more satisfying than their ordinary careers. Why? “For the first time in their lives, they found themselves doing something not for the pay”—army pay was miserable—“and not for the status”—everyone was just thrown in together—“but for the sake of getting something done for us all.”125
Laziness brings on deep sleep, and the shiftless go hungry. (19:15) SLOTH IS PROGRESSIVE. Sloth first brings on deep sleep and then hunger. In other words, sloth brings a progressive decline of one’s ability to work hard.
Laziness is not just a temperament but a moral failing. Sloth is self-centered rather than loving. It is dishonest, “trying to sidestep the facts and one’s share of the load.”
In the Babylonian creation myth, the Enûma Eliš, humans were created to do the work considered beneath the gods. Yet in Genesis you see God literally with his hands in the dirt (Genesis 2:7) doing manual labor and not considering it beneath him.
If you’re not doing work, and work in which you can take pride, you’re being cut off from part of your humanity. There will be an atrophy of your soul,
when love is life’s main dish, it doesn’t matter if the rest of the meal is just a bit of vegetables. And if hatred is the main course, even a fattened calf cannot redeem it.
Honoring God’s design leads to liberation.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “None learns the secret of freedom save only by way of control.”
we should ask the Lord, “Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name” (Psalm 86:11).
If you are too afraid to say what needs to be said, you are really an enemy of your friend’s soul.
If I can be content when you are sad, I’m not your friend (25:20). Friends voluntarily tie their hearts to one another. They put their happiness into their friends’ happiness, so they can’t emotionally flourish unless their friends are flourishing too.
friendship begins with a discovery. We must find persons with common loves and vision. C. S. Lewis wrote, “Where the truthful answer to the question, ‘Do you see the same truth?’ would be, ‘I see nothing and I don’t care about the truth; I only want a friend,’ no friendship can arise. . . . There would be nothing for the friendship to be about. . . . Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow travelers.”
You are not wise unless you fully grasp the power of words. Words pierce like swords—they get into your heart and soul.
Words embody and strengthen thoughts. When you say, “I hate you. I wish you were dead,” you say it because you feel it. But afterward you feel it more because you said it. What you say fills your heart.
when you have hate, you should use words to confess it, not to ventilate it. Talk about it to God or to friends and say, “I have this anger, this discouragement, this temptation.” Your words will, as it were, make the thoughts visible. You can sift them and get perspective on them and throw out the foolish and sinful ones much more easily because you’ve talked about them. Managing our speech is a way to get our whole self under control (James 3:2).
An abrasive tongue, a lying tongue, a foolish tongue—all of these are signs of a person who has resentment, dishonesty, and pride in his or her own heart. But the irony is this: Others will be able to see (through your words) more of your heart than you will.
Jeremiah sets a better model: He ate God’s word and delighted in it (Jeremiah 15:16; cf. Colossians 3:12–20).
lying is fundamentally a lack of love. Joy Davidman wrote: “There are the lies of gossip . . . which make haters out of us; the lies of advertising and salesmanship, which make money out of us; the lies of politicians, who make power out of us.”
Statements should not be evaluated only by what they say but also by what they intend to do.
the wise and upright are driven by integrity, consistency of character. They don’t have multiple selves, a real self, and a host of pseudoselves. They have one real self and it is not hidden. It is on display in every setting, in every role.
Because of pride I talk too much or harshly, because of fear, too little or dishonestly. Forgive me, and cure me of the false motives that make my speech so unlike yours. Amen.
Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up. (12:25)
Because our words must be life-giving (15:4), we must never use truth as a weapon.
Paul says every word must pass this test—“that it may benefit those who listen . . . according to their needs” (Ephesians 4:29).
“A truth that makes no impression as a generalization may be indelibly fixed in the mind when it is matched to its occasion and shaped to its task.”
words are untimely if they assume knowledge or experience the listener does not have.
Timeliness is difficult to achieve, because our natural temperaments usually incline us toward being too quick or too slow to speak.
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. . . . To answer before listening—that is folly and shame. (18:2,13)
Prejudice is a form of answering before listening.
The wise know what they have to say may be true and crucial, but they also know God is in charge and only he can open hearts (cf. Acts 16:14; John 6:44).
the wiser you are about a subject, the simpler and clearer your explanation. Simplicity lies on the far side of complexity, after we have worked through the issues. If you can’t be brief, you may not know enough about the subject to speak about it.
Like an earring of gold or an ornament of fine gold is the rebuke of a wise judge to a listening ear. . . .
Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. (16:24)
