Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 40 · February 9
No Overseer
“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:”
How much of what you did this morning got done only because someone would have noticed if it had not?
Proverbs sends the lazy man to school with an insect: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise." Everyone sees her hard work. Look also at the next line: "Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler." That is three words for a boss in a row, and the ant has none of them. An ant colony does have a queen, but she is not in charge of anyone; she lays eggs. Nobody in that nest is supervised, and still the food is gathered in before the weather turns.
Then look at her timing. She "provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest." She works by the calendar, in the months when nothing is wrong yet, because that is the only time of year the work can be done. Near the end of Proverbs she comes back as one of four small creatures that are "exceeding wise": "The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer." She is praised for knowing the season, and her strength is never mentioned.
The sluggard's excuse is quoted too, and it sounds reasonable: "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep." He has not refused to work. He has only put it off, a little at a time, on a fine morning. But the bill arrives on its own schedule: "So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man."
May God give you the ant's sense of what season it is. May the work nobody is checking get done in you anyway, in the weeks when there seems to be no reason to do it. And when winter reaches your house, may it find the store already in, and may you thank the God who made the ant and taught you by her.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 40 is Continual Guide (Isaiah 58:11).