Insightful Musings on the Scripturesby
Ray Sparre, NU class of '67
Ray has a wealth of experience as a Husband, Father, Pastor, Missionary, and student of the Word. He believes and practices his faith where the rubber meets the road. You'll find his writings to be practical, insightful, and grounded in a truly Christ-centered world view.
Below are links to a printable daily Bible reading guide which Ray has followed, and an archive of all his daily devotional writings for 2010 and 2011.
| Daily Reading Guide | 2011 Devotion Archives | 2010 Devotion Archives |
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26 March 2011
Proverbs 26
Focus: “Like a madman shooting firebrands or deadly arrows is a man who deceives his neighbor and says, “I was only kidding.” Proverbs 26:18-19.
I like these proverbs that begin with “Like” (NIV). I like anecdotes and parables that stimulate imagination to draw reasonable parallels between physical and practical reality so as to enhance understanding of their ideological, spiritual, and theoretical counterparts. It doesn’t take long for my imagination to kick in with this brief description of a hypothetical situation. I’m picturing a tight cluster of leaf houses like we would have in a typical densely-populated Solomon Islands or Vanuatu village. What if a stupid drunk guy is allowed to goof off with a bow and a bunch of arrows—just firing arrows into the air at random? What if he wraps some old “kaliko” (cloth) on the tips, dips them in kerosene, and lights them on fire? Harmless fun? Hardly! Suffering and damage are inevitable. Collective village control would shut the guy down in a hurry. But the ironic fact is that this is exactly the kind of unregulated damage and destruction going on when a person engages in dishonesty and deception. Then when someone identifies the deception and exposes it, this person will typically add to the heap of deception by adding another—“I was only kidding,” or “I was put up to it,” or “The devil made me do it.” Look no further than the political arena to find abundant examples of this kind of charade. But don’t forget to look in the mirror.
There’s another “Like” proverb nearby—verse 23: “Like a coating of glaze over earthenware are fervent lips with an evil heart.” Or LIKE painted blocks of styrofoam that one sells as fire bricks…or LIKE a fancy movie set façade that makes a termite-infested rotten shack look like a mansion…or LIKE a scrumptious-looking chocolate cake that has been made from stuff shoveled out of the cow barn—it’s all the same kind of thing—and one way or another, in the long run, yields very negative consequences.
Listen again to a portion of Jesus’ scalding rebuke leveled against the “professional” spiritual leaders of His day. (And remember—this is the Gentle Loving Gracious Son of God speaking.) “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are LIKE whitewashed tombs which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:27-28).
Let’s not pass over this lightly.
“O what a tangled web we weave. When first we practice to deceive.” - Walter Scott