Don’t Be Lazy!

Proverbs 10:26 As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him.

How many of us would like to be forced to drink vinegar? Or for that matter to continuously smell vinegar. When I was a teenager, I worked in a grocery store. My job was to stock grocery shelves after new food deliveries. On one occasion we had a shipment of food containing several cases of bottled vinegar. I stacked the vinegar containers onto a pallet truck and wheeled it from the stock room toward a grocery aisle. Because of my carelessness I did not properly secure the vinegar bottles on the truck. As a result, on my way to the food aisle all the vinegar bottles crashed onto the store’s tile floor. What a mess and what a smell! An odor of vinegar lingered there for several days.

And how many of us have tended to an outdoors fire? When I went camping with my children, they often wanted to start a campfire to roast marshmallows. If the wind suddenly changed direction it could blow smoke into our eyes. Then our eyes would tear up and we became very uncomfortable. As a result, we would quickly move away from the fire.

In this verse from Proverbs God compares an unbecoming sluggard careless in his task, to vinegar on our teeth and smoke in our eyes. Just as we would not want to be next to vinegar bottles crashing onto the floor, or sitting next to a camp fire with smoke blowing into our eyes, God doesn’t want to have close fellowship with a lazy person.