Proverbs 20.13
“Love not sleep, lest you come to poverty; open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread.”
This is another proverb that warns against laziness. It’s a “do the work” proverb. If you want to eat, you must do the work. If you want to produce or achieve anything, you must do the work.
It needs to be said that American society is in desperate need of a revival of the “do the work” mindset. Far too many people have settled into a lifestyle of receiving government entitlements rather than doing the work.
Keep in mind that this applies at both ends of the wealth spectrum. There are people at the lower end who resist working and instead depend on government assistance. They can work, but they don’t. And there are companies are the high end of the spectrum who secure entitlements and assistance from the government in order to subsidize their strategies, market position, and financial strength.
To be clear, there are people in poverty who need government assistance, but there are far too many who do not need it who receive it and have become dependent on it. Worse, there are many politicians who shamefully buy the votes of these people by promising and promoting ever-expanding government assistant programs. It’s a not-so-secret scam. These politicians take money (via taxes) from hard-working people and use that money to buy the votes of people who don’t want to work.
The same holds true for politicians who shamefully buy the votes of big corporations by promoting subsidies and other government entitlements that benefit those companies.
Again, we need to return to a “do the work” mindset. We need it for individuals, we need it for business, and we need it for government.
It always begins at the personal level. Make the choice. Trust God and do the work.
