Proverbs 6:8 she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest.
They pole upriver in a dug-out canoe, the whole family together. It takes a day to get to their new fields on the riverbank upstream from their village. As long as the river does not change course in the next six months they will be ok. As long as the rains come when they are due, they will be ok. As long as the children are not bitten by snakes during the day or spiders at night, they will be ok.
I love this family.
They clear the land all day, bent over in the sun, children working alongside parents. At last light, they eat corn gruel, cooked over a wood fire before they climb in under a wooden lean-to, covered in banana leaves to sleep till before dawn.
Day after day they do this until they plant the corn one day. Then they harvest the corn they planted six months before, and head back down the river. At their village, they remove the kernels from the corn and dry them in the sun, till they are stone-hard.
Mum pounds the dry kernels in her giant mortar and pestle until she has a fine flour. She mixes the flour with water and kneads her dough. The children carried the water from the river that morning. She makes her fire with wood she brought from the nearest forest the day before. Mum cooks the tortilla on her flat metal plate.
The family and visitors all eat.
I love this family.
KNOWLEDGE
The ant is given a gender and we move into figurative language that helps us identify with the ant. There is a time for pretty much everything, and the wisdom we are being imparted here is to do with our attitude to work and wellness.
When we do the right things at the right time it has an impact on our overall wellness.
There are responsibilities that we have towards ourselves and our families. I’m not sure what God will do for us, what we can do for ourselves.
We pray for a better job but don’t put in applications. We complain about issues in our life, but don’t take every action. We want to lose weight but won’t stop eating. We recognise injustice but never intervene. We see the giant, and listen to his proclamation, and dream that one day he will get him, but we won’t use what we have to challenge him.
God is encouraging us. Put in the application. 7. Take action. Reduce your eating. Intervene. Run towards the giant with your sling in your hand. If you will do what you can, you can count on God to do his part.
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 Hebrew word for “gathers” is pronounced as ” ‘agar” and this word appears three times in the Old Testament. The English translation for this word in the ESV is, gather.
It very simply means, to gather in.
WISDOM – what is the one most important thing that you should do today?
STRENGTHS THOUGHT: Focus, does not allow the press of the urgent to block the important. You help others clarify their values.
Allan’s Unauthorised Version – [her offering is established and ripe, her supplies are collected at the reaping time,]
PRAYER: Father, thank you for today. Help me to understand the seasons of my life and act accordingly. Thank you.
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