Proverbs 6:4 Give your eyes no sleep and your eyelids no slumber
It was my first real senior management role, I had a large office with a sofa and seats in one area and my desk and chair in another. It was neat, I could have meetings of the key team in my office. I had six or seven key reports, and then a staff of several hundred spread over three main locations.
One of my roles was dealing with staff who required some sort of performance management. There was a hard-drinking culture amongst some of the younger men, and when the monthly payday came around there was always a few that would not make it to work the next day or days. They always had excuses, and rarely did those involve the actual issues they were dealing with.
One day I was having an interview with an older man who was consistently absent after payday, and rarely called to say why. We had talked a few times over the preceding months and he had already received a formal warning on his record.
I was in hope that we could have a real conversation and maybe find a way forwards. He was in denial and became animated and angry. I could see no way ahead for us and decided that it was time for him to reposition himself. He was setting a really poor example for other employees and was actually well past the time when we could have let him go, perhaps already on his fourth or fifth “extra chance”.
When I read to him his record of non-attendance it was shocking, even to me. He exploded in anger and tried to come across the desk and punch me. The person with him calmed him down and eventually he left the office, shouting, cursing and uttering threats as to what he would do to me in the street one day.
It was a Friday. I was staying with friends in another town over the weekend.
I did not sleep well at all that weekend, and my thoughts were troubled throughout the days. I had to see the man again on Monday to do the final interview and agree on the severance. I was not looking forward to that.
I was a 30year old senior manager. Quite inexperienced in many ways. I imagined all the worst possible outcomes, and then started to feel the emotions that went with these, and then live like the imagined outcome was real. By Monday morning I was nervous, sleep-deprived and on edge.
He apologised, he understood why he was losing his job he said, accepted a generous severance and was gone. I learned a massive lesson – don’t worry!
I think I took a massive step forwards that day emotionally and psychologically. I had had the worst weekend over an imagined outcome, that never came to pass. Something shifted and I started to learn not to worry, and to sleep well in the middle of the storms.
KNOWLEDGE
There is the old saying, “there is no rest for the wicked”, which has its’ roots in Isaiah 48:2 “The Lord said, peace is not too wicked men”. This sentiment is echoed in Isaiah 57:20 which reads as [KJV] “but the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest…”
These instructions in verse six though are the prescription to avoid that outcome, that we get to give ourselves no rest before we end up in a season where there is no rest.
There is a compulsion to action here. God’s inspired wisdom, through the writer, is calling to us through the layers of generations, the million untold stories of those who listened and those who did not.
What agreements have we made with ourselves and others that are causing harm, or will cause harm to our destiny, which is, to be more like Jesus? Sometimes we make internal vows, you know when we say something like “I’ll never let anyone hurt me again”. We put our own walls in place, with us on the inside.
Maybe we are going into a business arrangement with a friend or a family member, and we have that niggling feeling that we should stop, but we don’t want to be a killjoy or cause any disruption, so we go along with the plans we have no faith in?
There is a compunction here, a conviction, and a challenge. Now. Now is the moment! Don’t delay, don’t dither, don’t defer.
UNDERSTANDING
Let’s pick one word from this verse to look closer at and see if that can help us gain a deeper insight into how God would love us to live?
The word for “slumber” in Hebrew, is pronounced as “fnumah” and this word appears 5 times in the Old Testament and is always translated in the ESV into the English word, slumber. We pick up on the idea that we should not allow anything to delay us in taking action.
WISDOMÂ – what was the last thing God said to you, and what have you done with that?
STRENGTHS THOUGHT: Achiever, make the same commitment to the important relationships in your life as you do to the important tasks. Help others find their energy sources.
Allan’s Unauthorised Version – [consistently and durably uncover your eyes from sleep, and your fluttering eyelids from slumber.]
PRAYER: Father, thank you for today. Help me to stay alert to sin’s tactics in my life and to leave nothing undone in my relationship with you. Thank you.
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