I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Proverbs 18-21.

    Today’s passage contains many nuggets of wisdom. I do not have time to point all of them out. However, I will touch on the things which stood out to me, because they either spoke to my own weaknesses/temptations or I thought they addressed things going on in the news today.

    The writer reminds us in many ways about the dangers of being lazy. Paying attention to what the writer is saying reveals that for many people laziness causes them to be poor. Laziness leads to poverty in two different ways. First, a lazy person fails to work when the time is optimum for gathering wealth (whether that is the lazy farmer who does not harvest when the crops become ripe, or the person who does not plan for the future). Second, laziness will cause us to fail to maintain things which we possess or are responsible for. Over time, if we do not spend the time maintaining things, they will be destroyed. Laziness can have results every bit as bad as outright destructiveness.

    The writer warns us against reaching conclusions before we hear all of the facts about a situation. If you look at the world around us you will see that time after time people have reached the wrong conclusion because they did not follow that advice. There are really two parts to the writers warning. We need to recognize that it takes time for all of the facts to be collected and that as a situation is examined initial appearances may prove to be deceiving. In addition, we need to be aware that the first person to speak up may have their own agenda leading them to leave out (or distort) facts which will not support the conclusion they wish you to reach. We should be shamed by speaking out on something before we have listened to what everyone has to say because, by doing so, we have revealed ourselves to be foolish. The writer even reveals why many people speak before hearing all of the facts. They do so because they are more interested in broadcasting their opinion and advancing their agenda than they are in knowing what really happened.