It’s Five Minute Friday, and I’ve got to get back to my blogging. So let’s see what happens with today’s prompt word, and what God seems to want me to do with it— to blog or not to blog…

 

The word is

PASS

 

Go.

 

Sometimes I decide to pass. Step back. bow out.

It’s not the enterprising way, the go-for-it, get-ahead, get-what-you-need (or think you need) way that’s promoted all around me, but it is sometimes the wisest way. Sometimes it’s God’s way.

I just sat last night skimming through Proverbs for wisdom about this very issue: whether to pass or not to pass on something I wanted and was just about to engineer, something I couldn’t get on my own, and would have to bring in someone else’s help to achieve.

After getting the spirit of so many proverbs that relate in some way, I could see red flags warning me off. Things like… “If you sit to dine with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are… given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies. For they are deceptive food.”

Right after that comes another warning “Do not overwork to be rich. Because of your own understanding, cease! Will you set your eyes on that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings; They fly away like an eagle…”

Immediately following that comes another red flag, something like the one first mentioned: “Do not eat the bread of a miser [literally, one who has an evil eye], nor desire his delicacies; for as he thinks in his heart, so is he. ‘Eat and drink!’ he says to you, but his heart is not with you. The morsel you have eaten, you will vomit up, and waste your pleasant words’” (Proverbs 23:1-8).

And at this point in the reading, I had already come to my conclusion. So many cautions had popped up before this, I felt I needn’t search further.

Like… “Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man do not go, lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul,” followed by “Do not be one of those who shakes hands in a pledge, one of those who is surety for debts; If you have nothing with which to pay why should he take away your bed from under you?” (Prov 22:24 -27).

Like… “A prudent [person] foresees evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished… Thorns and snares are in the way of the perverse; He who guards his soul will be far from them” (Prov 22:3,5)

Like… “The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, but those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty” (Prov 21:5).

Like… “An inheritance gained hastily at the beginning will not be blessed at the end” (Prov 20:21).

Like… “A fool’s lips enter into contention, and his mouth calls for blows” (18: 6). And…

“The beginning of strife is like releasing water. Therefore stop contention before a quarrel starts” (17:14). And…

“Better is a dry morsel with quietness than a house full of feasting with strife” (17:1), which kind of echoes “Better is a little with fear of the LORD, than great treasure with trouble…” (15:16,17).

“The righteous should choose his friends carefully..” (12:26)

“He who guards his mouth preserves his life, but he who opens wide his lips shall have destruction” (13:3).

 

… And many more!

 

I’d already taken the initial exploratory steps. I’d already gotten the offer of help. But, after all this wisdom from on high,

for today, for this time, I think I’ll…

PASS!