Today is the sixth day in this thirty-one day study of Proverbs and our topic today is, as you might expect, chapter six. Because today is the Lord’s Day I will write only very briefly. This chapter contains a metaphor that is one of my favorite parts of Proverbs. “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? 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.”
My first memory of these verses comes from a project I completed way back in the fifth or sixth grade. My teacher assigned me a project on insects, and my parents suggested I write about the ant. They showed me this very passage and it formed the framework for the project. The Bible tells the sluggard, the man whose foolishness expresses itself in laziness, to look to the ant for wisdom. What a wonderful thought, that God’s crowning creation, humans, can learn from one of the tiniest and most humble. We can see God’s wisdom even in a creature as tiny and seemingly insignificant as the ant. The ant has no captain, no ruler, yet works hard every day. She spends her life providing for herself. The sluggard, on the other hand, is lazy and spends his life sleeping. The natural consequence of his laziness is that poverty will come upon him and overtake him like an armed robber who breaks in at night.
Of course later in life I heard Judy Rogers sing “Go To The Ant” more times than I cared to count, and even today my children listen to that album, singing along about the wisdom of God shown so clearly in His creation.
Reflection
God’s natural order is seen in even the most humble of creatures. His order pervades this entire world, even in its fallenness. There is much we can learn about Him by studying His creation.
