15 A sluggard buries his hand in the dish;     he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth. 16 A sluggard is wiser in his own eyes     than seven people who answer discreetly.17 Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears     is someone who rushes into a quarrel not their own.18 Like a maniac shooting     flaming arrows of death 19 is one who deceives their neighbor     and says, “I was only joking!”20 Without wood a fire goes out;     without a gossip a quarrel dies down.REFLECTIONSWritten by Vincent ChanI remember learning a wonderful word in high school: Procrastination. To procrastinate is to delay or postpone something because either we find it too hard or something else becomes more interesting. Either way, my mates and I soon turned it into an artform as we bragged about who still hadn’t started the assignment that was looming closer and closer. And to be honest, I think many of us can still relate to this a bit too much: tax returns that are disrupted by Netflix binges, things that need fixing but we say we’ll do it tomorrow, devotions that you start to write and then you wander over to Facebook…But while our world revels in procrastination and putting things off, there is nothing biblical about that attitude. These few verses from Proverbs take a more humorous approach towards it: Someone who claims there’s a lion roaming the streets just to get out of having to go to work (verse 13), someone who lies in bed all day doing nothing except rolling from one side to the other, like the turning of a door (verse 14), and someone who can barely even cook a meal to feed themselves (verse 15). On paper we laugh, but in real life there’s nothing funny about such individuals. People around them are constantly frustrated as excuse after excuse is given for why they couldn’t commit to what they said they would do.   In Proverbs, the solution to sloth or laziness is to work hard and be diligent. However, the larger biblical picture for sloth points towards more than just needing to work harder. Instead it’s working hard at the right thing. The husband who spends all his time ‘working hard’ at his job but neglecting his family is also lazy – it’s just harder to see from the outside! The opposite of sloth is not productivity, but taking responsibility for the roles that God has assigned us. When we love the people around us, we work at the things we need to even if they make us uncomfortable. After all, the fruit of the Spirit contains both love and self-control. So as you go through today, what are some things you’re prone to procrastinate over? How does love for others re-shape that?ABOUT THE AUTHORVincent is on our ministry staff team, and has tried and re-tried too many productivity apps.