Fattening Up

"The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing,
But the soul of the diligent is made fat." Proverbs 13:4

This verse made me smile this morning because it's different. In normal life if you are a sluggard and do nothing, you get fat and your body becomes poorly. If you are diligent in being active and eating right, you become thin, your body does very well and is overall more healthy. But here in this verse we're talking about the soul. We're talking about the very core of you- what makes you you. It's very interesting to me to see the absolute truth here, and to see the exact opposite of our physical bodies in play.

If we go through life being busy with life and don't take the time to feed our soul, our soul will be become withered. It's also more than just taking a time out to do some Bible reading or going to church, it's also about taking the initiative to do just that. It's about actually taking care of those intentions instead of just letting them hang out there. And I know we all know what I'm talking about. Just this morning I was woken up at 5:15 am. That's over an hour before the alarm was supposed to go off. Just the same, the carbon monoxide detector decided at that moment to be low on batteries and beep. I got up and pulled out the bad batteries so it would stop beeping and allow the kids to sleep. Looked at the clock, and my very first thought was "only an hour to the alarm, maybe I should get up and read my Bible." Followed by "I wonder if I can get back to sleep- that's another hour I can sleep." And which do you think I chose? It's very kind of you to think I chose wisely and chose the first one. But the truth is that I crawled back into bed, closed my eyes, and then proceeded to toss and turn for the next hour. I didn't sleep a wink, and I also didn't get any extra Bible reading in. Basically, it was a complete waste of an hour. Even worse, I had the same thing happen this past Monday morning- although it was an early morning phone call and not the CO detector.

And in retrospect, I obviously chose poorly, and I wonder if it happens again will I rise to the occasion and grab hold of the opportunity to feed my soul? I wonder if I had gotten up would my day have gone better? In Monday's case, I woke with a cold, so the day was kind of a bust before it even began. In today's case, I'm already anticipating that I'm going to be needing an extra shot of caffeine or two to simply make it to the end of the day. Perhaps if I'd chosen wisely and got up and fed my soul instead, God would have just given me a natural energy boost to make it through the day productively.

It's easy for me to give God the end of my day. I'm home alone during the week, so I tuck the kids into bed and then I usually take the rest of my day to relax. I catch up on blogging or watch something. I've been working on learning some new skills with a needle as well, and I use that time for that. But it's nothing for me to stay up an extra hour or so to catch up on what God wants to tell me. It's easy to do that. It's so much easier to give up that hour of sleep at the end of my day. It's not so easy to give up that hour at the beginning of the day. So the question is: is waking up an hour early twice in one week coincidence? I doubt it. But am I going to take that step? Am I going to listen to what the Holy Spirit is pushing me towards? That is a tough one for me- so tough! I so want my soul to fatten, but maybe the end of the day isn't where I'm getting the best feeding. Maybe it's that morning one I need to really give me what I need. *Sigh* This is going to be a tough one.