DAY 10 - Wisdom for the Broken Vineyard | "House of Wisdom" Devotional

Saturday, February 10, 2018 Bryan Hudson 0 Comments

Proverbs 24:30, I walked by the field of a lazy person, the vineyard of one with no common sense. 31 I saw that it was overgrown with nettles. It was covered with weeds, and its walls were broken down. 32 Then, as I looked and thought about it, I learned this lesson: 33 A little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest— 34 then poverty will pounce on you like a bandit; scarcity will attack you like an armed robber.

If we needed motivation to push aside any temptation to allow laziness or neglect to seep into our lives, this Scripture should drive it out! There is something to be said for neatness, order, and maintaining things that we own. 

A lot of what goes wrong in life, including some forms of poverty, has nothing to do with circumstances out of our control. It is interesting that the writer used a vineyard (a grapevine farm) as an example. Jesus used a vineyard for his teaching in John 15:1 “I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener.” 

The Proverb’s writer could not have chosen a more difficult plant to use for an object lesson. Vines and vineyards are very difficult to grow and manage. Vines will naturally grow all over the ground, up the sides of walls, around the trunks of trees, and become entirely unmanageable. Grapevines must be managed by a vinedresser to guide and provide structure for the vine. 
Our lives are more like vineyards than evergreen trees, which require very little maintenance. The bad condition of the vineyard described in our Scripture text was not years in the making. Given the aggressive growth patterns of grapevines, and of our lives, chaos can follow after a only few months of neglect.

Wisdom operates through diligence, maintenance, and a plan for improvement.

Reflection Question: Is there anything broken, or out of order, in your life that diligence could change in a matter of weeks?