Proverbs 4:21 “let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart”

It was dark and late and I had been on the road for days. I was somewhere in Yorkshire, a bit lost really. The only thing I knew to do was to keep moving. So I walked along the side of a back road, up long slow hills to windy summits and then down again to rusty cattle grid gateways. On and on.

Earlier in the day, a family had kindly bought me some soup and bread at a roadside café when they had given me a lift, but I was starting to feel hungry again.

I could see a glimmer of light in the distance, and it might be a car, but I could not work out if it was coming from behind me or towards me as the hills all around were confusing. I was not sure about people who were out at this time of night, as I’d had a couple of bad experiences, so I would tend to hide at night and then look for a lift in the mornings as it got a bit lighter. But there was nowhere to hide really, so I just kept walking. The car came slowly up the hill behind me, and I could see its lights flickering around my feet, and then my legs and upwards, until suddenly when the car was only a short distance away it slowed and there was a spinning blue tinge to the light. Oh-oh, it was the police. Not good.

There was one policeman in a Morris Minor police car. He had me get in the car and then drove me to the nearest tiny village, where it turned out he lived, as he stopped at his house and not a police station. He questioned me at length, and to my shame, I lied. I was not ready to be caught, even with the hardships. Previously I would have given up my name and details right away.

I gave the name and address of a friend in Scotland. It was risky. This person would not be reported missing, but if they sent someone to his house to check then the game was up for sure.

The policeman went into his house to use the phone and check out my story. While he was there I saw his wife come to the lit doorway and peer out towards me in the car. The year was 1972, and I guess I was a bit of an oddity in rural Yorkshire at that time of night. I waited. Nervous. A thirteen-year-old masquerading as a sixteen-year-old, lying to the police at 2 am in the middle of nowhere. Stomach cramps and an overwhelming need for the toilet were my immediate companions.

The policeman came back to the car, crossing the road slowly with a package in his hands. He said I was good to go on, and handed me a package his wife had made of some ham and cheese sandwiches.

I took the sandwiches thankfully and waved over the road a thankyou to his wife who was back at the doorway.

It was a great escape, and I was on my way. To be honest, as soon as I was out of sight I wolfed down the sandwiches and I sat down at the side of the road and cried. Not much later the sun came up, with the promise of a new day.

 

 

KNOWLEDGE

This scripture leans back into the previous scripture, and so the objects that are discussed are the words of God. There is a chance they can escape from us, from our awareness and from our decision making. If they could not escape, we would not be warned against letting them escape. For us as New Testament Christians, what may that look like? Could it be that we have accepted the cross, but not the commission? For the Old Testament believers, it could be that they memorised parts of the first 5 books of the bible [Torah] and held these dearly in their hearts, meditating openly on these verses day and night. For us today, we have the whole of the bible to learn from, to store up as treasure in our hearts, to value, to consider, to reflect on, to apply the learning to our everyday lives. We are to be living sacrifices as it says in Romans As the Message Version has it in Romans 12:1-2 – “so here’s what I want you to do, God helping you; Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking, instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognise what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity. God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you”.

Rome would have been full of temples [even in people houses] where animals were killed and sacrificed to their gods constantly, and Paul paints us a word picture against this backdrop, of a “living sacrifice”. He warns us not to let the culture of today, squeeze out of us, the work God wants to do in us. – Don’t let it escape………

 

 

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 “heart” used here is “lebah” and this word is found 252 times in the Old Testament. In the ESV it is translated into English words such as heart; mind; fainthearted; irresolute; encouraging; understanding; broken-hearted; wholehearted; and, consider your ways.

In verse twenty-one, we can see a hint of many aspects, our mind, our courage, our emotions and our inner person, as well as our conscience.

 

 

WISDOM: what parts of today’s culture are vying for your attention?

 

 

STRENGTHS THOUGHT: Achiever and Futuristic as a Theme Dynamic you glimpse the possible and pursue with passion.

 

 

Allan’s Unauthorised Version – [do not turn aside or deviate, so that your perception and view are blocked, rather guard securely and observe with obedience, from the centre of your inner man where you both think and feel]

 

 

PRAYER: Father, thank you for today. Help me today to have an unobstructed view of your ways, to allow the challenge to come where it needs to come, to lower any defences that I have wrongly put in place to try and protect myself, so that you may have your way with me. Thank you.

 

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