Proverbs 26:13

Proverbs 26 contains a series of short, satirical observations about "the sluggard," a lazy person the writer uses as a comic figure to expose self-defeating behavior. In the ancient Near East, lions occasionally did roam near towns and roads — so the sluggard's excuse isn't invented from nothing, which makes the satire all the more clever. The humor lies in the scale: the most fearsome danger imaginable — a roaming, fierce lion — is deployed to avoid the completely ordinary task of going outside to work. The exaggeration is deliberate and pointed. The proverb exposes a universal human tendency: when we don't want to do something, we become remarkably creative at finding reasons that sound serious enough to justify staying put.

God, I know the excuses I make. You know them better than I do. Give me the honesty to see my lions for what they are, and the simple courage to step out into the street anyway. Keep me from mistaking my own comfort for wisdom. Amen.

If you've ever talked yourself out of something you knew you should do, you know the sluggard personally. The human mind is astonishingly good at threat inflation — at taking something small and routine and dressing it up in lion's clothing. The excuse doesn't have to be completely false to be fundamentally dishonest. There probably were real lions sometimes. But no lion was actually stopping this person. The danger was real enough to sound credible and fictional enough to be convenient. What's your lion? What's the story you tell yourself — the one that sounds reasonable enough that you almost believe it — that keeps you from the work, the call, the difficult conversation you know is waiting? The writer of this proverb is almost smiling as they write it, and that gentleness is part of the invitation. The first step past your lion is usually just admitting it probably isn't there.