Cheering the Sluggard

Read: Matthew 25:24-30

The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing.                                                                                        Proverbs 20:4

     The world loves a “go-getter.” In fact, the world rewards the one who gets out early, puts his nose to the grindstone, and makes things happen. Men like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and countless others, who started out with little more than a dream, tirelessly worked to make their dreams a reality – and history remembers their names. You don’t have to invent something world-changing to be remembered. You do have to get to your feet and get busy doing something. Nobody cheers the quarterback who is sitting on the sideline during a game-winning drive. Nobody hails the man hiding in the foxhole during the fight. Nobody praises the firefighter who stayed in the truck while the others rushed into the burning building to rescue those inside. And – nobody cheers a sluggard.

     Laziness is the bane of any society. When the young men only want to sit around playing video games or watching television, a society crumbles under its own weight because there is no one to bear the load. The young men are the able-bodied individuals that are still able to handle the stress of labor-intensive jobs. Often, young men see older men making good money in jobs that look very easy. They see them living well, and they think that those things should be handed to them, as well. What they don’t realize is that those older men who are now enjoying their lives are doing so because they put in the time and the hard work when they were younger. They earned their lifestyle. Many young men expect to be lazy and still get paid. Life does not work that way. 

     Someone said, “Killing time is not murder; it’s suicide.” Wasting time is wasting life because time is the stuff life is made of. There is certainly time for relaxation from time-to-time after hard work, but the sluggard does all the relaxing before any hard work has been done, and the world has no use for a young man like that. I believe that within each young man is the desire to go out and make something of himself, a desire to make a decent living, and a drive to make those things happen. Each young man needs to dig deep inside himself, find that work ethic, and get up and get going. The world is ready to hail the man that makes something of himself; but remember, no one cheers the sluggard.

Quote of the day: “Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.”  - James Baldwin