You Snooze, You Lose

Read Proverbs 24

A little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—then poverty will pounce on you like a bandit; scarcity will attack you like an armed robber.

Proverbs 24:33-34

Long before someone invented the alarm, people invented the snooze. In fact, the snooze button is a grudging attempt to satisfy those who turn off their alarms and go back to sleep. Snooze buttons blunt the sheer effectiveness of cold-turkey wake-up buzzers.

This proverb highlights our tendency to describe laziness in diminutive terms—a little extra sleep, a little more slumber. In reality, those terms describe a bad habit. A little of this and a little of that leads to a life of inattention and poor preparation. When the alarm finally rings loud enough, the person wakes up to an overwhelming condition—poverty.

Neither scarcity nor poverty is an armed robber. There’s nothing left to steal. But these experiences tend to demoralize people and rob them of the desire to reverse their habit. The warning of this proverb comes early in the process. The best time to break the tendency to be lazy occurs when it’s still “a little” laziness. Fill your life with reasons to get up. Anticipate using tomorrow well. When the alarm goes off, get up! God has given you another day!

A WORD FOR TODAY

Don’t sleep at the wheel.

Today, Lord, allow me to plan tomorrow in such a way that I will be eager to get up and be useful for you in the morning.