Proverbs 6:17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
We can so easily drift from God’s best to some sort of self-imposed standards of behaviour. Growing up our house was always kept perfectly clean and everything in its place. Dusting and vacuuming was daily routine for my mum. There was an almost obsession with how everything looked.
We had to wear clean underpants every time we went out, in case we were in a traffic accident. Then there would not only be the trauma of life-threatening injuries but the unacceptable public shame of seeing the medical team all whispering about how my underpants were not totally clean.
The weird thing about our house was that we basically never had any visitors. People were met at the door and chatted to there, an invite to come inside was really harder to gain than finding one of Willie Wonka’s gold tickets. I would wonder who we were keeping everything so perfect for, year after year.
My parents would say to me [especially when I was dirty] that cleanliness was next to godliness. I think I resigned myself in my heart at that point that I would never really be good enough for God.
We did go to church on a few Sunday mornings. I remember we all put on our very best clothes – my dad never came. Then I would sit and stare at my feet for what seemed like hours as a man up in a box said stuff I did not understand. I would be nipped and poked constantly being told to sit still.
Tidiness will not create a relationship with God, clean underpants will not create a relationship with God, neither will sitting still in church, having a sterile house, or even personal hygiene.
Now it’s good to stay clean and to listen to what’s being said in church. But these are external things. What our reading today is all about is internal. I wonder today about the internal life of my parents, the struggle they were in each day to look the part, rather than to relax and to just be the part.
Where in my life today am I striving to look the part, and can I today relax and just learn to trust God and be the part.
KNOWLEDGE
As I read this verse this morning I am confronted with the picture of the capture and death of God’s only Son, Jesus. The attitude of those high priests that had him captured, the way the accusations were brought that was not true, and then the mockery as his life was taken from him. It’s all here!
Here we have God telling us about the things he hates, and we can catch a glimpse of something deeper.
Yes for sure we can take this at surface value, and we can agree that God can not stand for pride, lies, and murder.
But there is a whisper here from on high, that God’s hate is directed towards all sin. The sin that is crushing people today, the sin that is eroding our planet today, the condition of the hearts of men and women.
It’s personal for God, as not only is that sin impacting and destroying his creation, it has also left its visible mark on the creator.
So this morning as I write this I am thinking about my eyes, how they look at life and what I allow them to see. My tongue, what words come from it and how that shapes my world. And my strength, and how I use that to care for or to be careless.
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 used for “shed” in Hebrew is pronounced as “sepeq” and appears 115 times in the Old Testament. In the ESV it is translated into English words such as, pour out; cast up; shed; slipped; scattered; lavished; and, cast up.
For our reading of this verse, the word implies that mockery is attached to the action of taking life.
WISDOM – are my words building up or tearing down today?
STRENGTHS THOUGHT: Developer, looks to release the potential in others, with genuine care for them.
Allan’s Unauthorised Version – [exalting sin, vain speech, and power that mocks and spills life-blood free from blame.]
PRAYER: Father, thank you for today. Help me to use all that you have given me to bring honour to your name. Thank you.
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