... let your daughter drive the car... just kidding. the title of this post has NOTHING to do with the photo. but i took that last night after dad ate dinner with us. and instead of making him “sing for his supper”, i made him “supervise for his supper” while millie had to “drive for her dinner”. once she gets comfortable going over 10 miles per hour, she is going to be unstoppable. which may not be a good thing... this is the SCARIEST stage of parenting so far. it is really frightening to think of her out on the road. and she is such a safe girl. it is all those “other” drivers that scare me. and the fact that she has NO SENSE OF DIRECTION. NONE. ZIP. NADA. once she is on her own. we will never see her again. and not because she isn’t trying to come home... because she can’t find her way.
anyway, onto proverbs 6. one of my favorite chapters. because it is such a GREAT overview of how NOT to live. proverbs 6 reminds me of the book how to ruin your life, by ben stein. which is a funny read, the chapter titles say it all. things like...
“forget about tomorrow”,
“don’t learn any useful skills”,
“don’t have any self disciple”,
”spend as much as you want and don’t be afraid to go into debt”,
“truly believe that you are only as valuable as what you own”,
“pretend to be someone you’re not”,
and “know that your wishes are the only ones that matter in any given situation”.
and they are all covered in proverbs 6, the original “how to ruin your life” chapter. it really covers all the BIG ways that you can mess up and covers ideas of how to overcome these HUGE pitfalls in live...
let’s have a little overview of proverbs chapter 6...
verses 1-5: covers ruining your life by not being financially responsible. and gives three ways to avoid this... one: be AWARE of what debt really means. two: FIND a way out. and three: do it with URGENCY.
verses 6-11: avoid laziness by studying diligence in nature (the ant). don’t hit the snooze button and seize every opportunity. procrastination is stealing from yourself. so rid your self of bad habits.
verses 12-15: avoiding deceptive people and schemes. when what you see is not what you get. so rid yourself of bad characters.
verses 16-19: avoiding wickedness in our own bodies (eyes, tongue, hands, heart, feet, lying, and the capstone.... stirring up dissension among family members). so rid yourself of bad character (within yourself).
verses 20-35: avoiding sexual promiscuity. and i think this first point is so vital to teach my children (and my favorite part)... the foundation of parental guidance is the first line of defense against falling into this pitfall! playing with fire WILL burn you and the stakes are really high. money can’t bail you out of this pit and it is self destructive. immoral behavior has REAL consequences. you will wound your soul.
in fact that whole section reminded me of a recent oprah. now to be fair i do NOT watch oprah everyday. i record some of the episodes that interest me, the home decor ones usually. but i had seen that one of them a few weeks ago was about a couple of 14 year olds that thought they were ready to have sex. dr. laura berman (who i do NOT EVER AGREE with 99.999999999999% of the time) was on to talk to this young couple and their mothers. and i wanted to see what she had to say to them.
and dr. berman surprised me by being very good with this young couple. she has a totally different view of sexuality than i have BUT she raised a few key questions with this couple that really showed them (mostly the young girl) that she was NOT ready for a sexual relationship. she was really brilliant and i learned a think or two about talking to teenagers from her.
and in the end when the young girl admitted that she now thought that she wasn’t ready to make that step... the entire audience of women stood up and applauded. and i cried. because i saw a group of audience members who NO MATTER THEIR WORLDVIEW on sex knew that it would be harmful for that young girl to be involved in a sexual relationship. they knew that it would leave a wound that would last.
the women in that audience knew what proverbs 6 says maybe not in their heads, but they knew it in their hearts (perhaps in their wounded hearts) and they cheered for a young girl that they didn’t even know an hour before.
dr. berman knew it, though her views would not line up with God’s at all... but she knew that this was wrong for this couple. it is hard to defend a policy of “anything goes” (which is usually her policy “as long as it makes you happy and it feels good”) when in this world we have seen that when “anything goes” the thing that usually goes around is heartbreak, disease, unplanned pregnancies, broken lives, and a whole lot of regret. leading not to happiness and feeling good, but misery.
if an audience full of strangers and a sex therapist who triumphs the “do it if it feels good” theory of sexuality thinks it is a BAD idea to be sexual promiscuous, how much more so do our parents and God, our Creator and Savior, have an incredible stake in making sure that young people do what is BEST for their lives... so trust that your parents and God have the BEST in mind for you when they instruct you in the way you should go...
but all of that has NOTHING to do with my proverb of the day. but i just LOVE proverbs 6 so much so i had to wax poetically on the WHOLE chapter.
now onto my proverb of the day...
i almost chose proverbs 10-11
A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest-
and poverty will come on you like a bandit
and scarcity like an armed man.
but then i went and took a nap and i didn’t feel like choosing that one.
so i chose this verse instead...
it is the last thing in the list of things that God hates, well more than hates... there are 6 things He hates and 7 things that are an abomination to Him. this the the seventh thing... the thing that completes the wickedness in our souls...
proverbs 6:19 (the message) ... a troublemaker in the family.
in the king james “he that soweth discord among brethern”.
this verse isn’t saying that there is no discord (strife, variants, different beliefs, contentions) among brethern (family, members of a groups). if you are in a large family like i am... then there are differences. they are always there. sometimes we NEED those differences (for the whole iron sharpens iron thing) but we are not to soweth those differences. the interpretation of that word “soweth” has several good meaning to consider....
1) to send, send away, let go, stretch out
1) to send
2) to stretch out, extend, direct
3) to send away
4) to let loose
1) to send off or away or out or forth, dismiss, give over, cast out
2) to let go, set free
3) to shoot forth (of branches)
4) to let down
5) to shoot
we don’t send away the differences, and we don’t stretch them out and make them larger than they are already. we don’t direct these differences. we can’t control them (and i love to control things). we don’t let it loose (talk about it with everyone). we don’t dismiss it or cast it out. we don’t shoot forth branches from it, we don’t develop whole strategies just to deal with these differences and make charts and graphs of them. and we don’t shoot those who have differences. though we may want to load up our weapons...
the holman christian standard translates the verse as “one who stirs up trouble among brothers”.
so i won’t be stirring up anything this month. and i can’t try to strain it out either, i can’t ever get it out of the mix. but i can’t stir it up either. and i can’t shoot anybody. which is a good thing. because i have terrible aim.
no stirring. leave my spoon out of the mix.
but at least i can still take naps...