Proverbs 6:6-11

There's a humbling buried in verse 6. Man — made in the image of God, given dominion over the creatures — gets sent to study under a bug. That's the fall for you: the creature once head of God's school now takes remedial lessons from the smallest student in it.

And the ant teaches one lesson with three points. She works without supervision — "no guide, overseer, or ruler," no boss watching, no time clock, no performance review — and works anyway. That's the test of real character: what you do when nobody is checking. Half the working world needs an overseer; the ant out-performs them with none, because her diligence is built in, not bolted on. She works with the season — "provideth her meat in the summer." She doesn't gather in winter; she gathers while gathering is possible. Every life has summers — seasons when strength, opportunity, and time are all in hand — and they end. And she works for the future — storing now what she'll need then. Diligence is just foresight with calluses.

Verse 10 is one of the Bible's finest pieces of mimicry — Solomon does the sluggard's voice: "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands..." Notice it's never no. The sluggard never refuses to get up; he negotiates. A little more. Just five minutes. Starting Monday. He fully intends to work, study, change, get serious about God — soon. His whole life is conducted in the snooze-button tense.

And while he negotiates, verse 11 is happening: "So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man." A traveler covers ground slowly — too slowly to alarm anybody — but he keeps walking, and one day he's at the door. Anyone who has waited for a column of armed men knows the dread: they seem to come so slowly, soundless, far off — and yet they are coming on. Then they arrive all at once, and a man "thoroughly mastered by arms which himself has furnished" cannot resist. Ruin by laziness always feels sudden and never is.

Two fences around this teaching. First, diligence is not anxiety: there is a care of the head, which is duty, and a care of the heart, which is sin — the same Lord who sends you to the ant says "take no thought for the morrow" (Matthew 6:34). Work hard; worry never. Second, this is doctrine for today too: Paul carries the ant's lesson straight into the church age — "if any would not work, neither should he eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10), and we work "that he may have to give to him that needeth" (Ephesians 4:28). A believer's work ethic is part of his testimony — the world watches Christian workers with the eyes of a lynx, and laziness in a man who talks about heaven preaches louder than his words.

And take the ant's lesson up one level, where it matters most. Spiritual sloth runs on the very same snooze button — a little more delay, I'll get serious about God later — but the stakes are not groceries. This sleep has all heaven for its unclaimed treasure, all hell for its experience of want, all time for its season of neglect — and all eternity to break upon it. How long wilt thou sleep? When wilt thou arise?