On many occasions I can remember standing in the mall with my mom as a kid. On this particular day, we were in a music store—I know, what is that? It was the era of CDs and all the posters for teens and preteens alike to wallpaper their ceilings. While we were standing in line, we saw one of my brother’s good friends. Wanting to mess with him, my mom asked him if he was going to purchase one of the posters from a popular boy band advertised next to us. He smiled and shook his head before responding, “if I can’t have them all, I don’t want any.”
That story stuck in my head for multiple reasons. One, it humored and delighted that preteen girl listening in. Two, it has been heavily quoted in the Evans household henceforth. Three, I think my heart can tend to say that same thing about small tasks, progress, and work.
How? How does she do it? Who is this superwoman? Doesn’t she ever turn on Netflix for a little “background noise,” while her hands are busily spinning her thread only to become more enthralled in the show and realize her hands have grown a little less busy? How does she avoid ever feeling lazy?
Maybe you too have read that verse the same way. As though her lack of suffering is referring to her lack of inclination or superhuman resistance to the emotion. As if she isn’t ever tempted to step over a mess on her way to lay down or read a book.
But let’s look again. This verse isn’t saying she never feels the pull towards laziness, only that she does not suffer from it. The consequences of an idle life do not entangle her because she does not allow it room in her life.
The ESV translation gives us further insight into the situation.
“She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.” (ESV)
It isn’t that she never feels tempted, it’s that she doesn’t take the bait. And what a perfect image of this pull. Who here has never felt the tangible temptation of bread? As if laziness isn’t a strong enough picture, let’s paint it using the imagery of Red Lobster cheese biscuits. Now you’re talking this Baptists girl’s language.
The proverbs 31 woman felt it. The same draw you and I feel. The craving to just lay down whatever we must do for something we want to do. And in addition, feeling like we have earned it. I know because she wasn’t superhuman. She was just plain human like you and me with human emotions and human frailty to match. Despite this shared resemblance, she didn’t succumb to this weakness, and this is the reason she avoids suffering.
It’s particularly important to address the difference between rest, taking care of yourself, and just plain laziness. Rest means you break from what you’re doing before resuming. Taking care of yourself means scheduling something you want to do. Laziness takes hold when you look for ways to do that for the foreseeable future. The first two are both needed and refreshing, but the other is prohibited and depleting. What feels like a lifelong rest can end up being a spiral into chaos and an overarching sense of lacking control.
“She carefully watches everything in her household.” Man, that first line will exhaust a person. I must not be carefully watching everything in my household, or I’d be able to tell you where all the child-sized socks go to die. And the counterparts to whatever mismatched Tupperware you have stuffed away in that one drawer. Honestly, does this phenomenon even make sense? What function did we even have for that one other part of the Tupperware set?
No, this doesn’t mean her household was always in order or that she always achieved her to-do list. It just means she was aware and involved. She didn’t check out and she didn’t forsake her to-do list, even if it was never quite completed or perfect. In fact, she didn’t let the taunt of perfection keep her from pursuing her work. She knew that meaningful work is most often comprised of small progress and laziness of slow fade.
I don’t know about you, but I feel extraordinarily overwhelmed lately. By both my overall list and even the smallest tasks. I woke up Monday morning with every system in my house out of order and nothing but a muddled brain on how to fix it. When I get this way, I feel angry and victimized by life. I secretly look for somewhere—anywhere—other than myself to lay the blame. I can even be pretty convincing. But you know what? It isn’t really anyone or anything else. It’s me. I’m finding that when I don’t make reasonable expectations to balance work and rest, I end up justifying dropping it all and feeling lost in the aftermath. And if I’m being a little honest and a whole lot vulnerable, I think I’m suffering from laziness.
Maybe the hardest part about conquering laziness is the ability to name it and stare it in the face. The word itself gives off such a willful and purposeful air. As if in our laziness, we see the work set before us and simply refuse to do it. And okay, maybe that is true sometimes, ahem, laundry elephant in the room (both metaphorically and in actual size). Or as if it’s just a snobby overlooking of menial tasks. Really it often starts by the bossing of our feelings when we look at the mountain ahead of us and wonder how on earth we’ll ever conquer it. So if we can’t do it all, we don’t want any.
But what if most of the time our laziness is just born from distractedness? What if it’s usually not purposeful or even detected by us but merely a sneaky effect of a life spent looking out the window? Or perhaps more accurately, through the lens of a tiny handheld screen?
Whatever the cause for our distracted time, priorities, and ultimately our distracted hearts, what if this week we resolved to watch with care as the Proverbs 31 woman did? Both to watch our God and our households?
Not only did this woman watch with care, she laughed without fear of the future. Bill Dye once said she didn’t laugh because she knew what the future held, “she laughed because she knew she had what it takes to meet it.” Because when we allow God to clothe us in his strength and dignity, we rest in the assurance that we can accomplish much, even if it’s one step at a time. The work we're doing that feels like we’re chipping away at an unformed mass has meaning. In both what we are doing and in the faithfulness to continue. Remaining in this truth has the potential to change our laziness into laughter.
Maybe with this small shift in focus our time won’t be swallowed by nothingness or our joy won’t be stolen by comparison. Because you can’t carefully watch your own household if you’re intent on watching someone else’s.
The answer is uncomplicated, but the solution feels tougher. If we don’t want to suffer from laziness, we cannot allow it into our lives. However we need to be honest with ourselves and with God if we want to get there. A tired person needs a nap. A stressed person needs relaxation. But a person tempted by the draw of laziness—there is more here that we seek than simply a break. If you find yourself in this same hole as me, take heart. The deeper the pit feels, the more opportunity for God to fill it with his own joy and peace which surpasses all understanding-- if we’ll only ask.
Proverbs 13:4 (NLT)
“Lazy people want much but get little,
but those who work hard will prosper.”
Colossians 3:23 (NLT)
“Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.”
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