Go to the Ant

Proverbs tells the sluggard to go and look at the ant. It is an odd instruction, and it is meant to be a little humbling. The ant has no commander, no overseer, no ruler, and yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. It works because the work is there to be done and the season will not wait.

The lesson is not that rest is bad. Proverbs elsewhere warns against wearing yourself out to get rich. The lesson is about initiative. The sluggard is not a villain. He is someone who needs to be told, repeatedly, and who answers with a little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands. Poverty, the passage says, then arrives like a thief.

Most of us have one area where we are ant-like and another where we are sluggard-like. You may be diligent at your job and negligent about your prayer life, or the reverse. This week, pick the one place where you keep waiting to be told. Do the next small thing there without being asked. Summer is a season for gathering, and it is already August.