Diligence isn’t everything. You can work really hard at growing your crop and have it come to nothing if there’s a drought. You can work industriously at your job and still get laid off when they decide to move the factory overseas.

But diligence still counts for a lot. For those times when we are feeling slothful, Proverbs offers us this admonition: “Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise. Without having any chief of officer or ruler, it prepares its food in summer, and gathers its sustenance in harvest” (Proverbs 6:6-8). We can see that it isn’t just hard work that is being praised, but initiative and drive: the ability to see what needs to be done, and getting after it without being told.

There’s this taunting quality to the text here, trying to provoke a response: “How long will you lie there, O lazybones? When will you rise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want, like an armed warrior” (6:9-11). There are days when I’d really much rather be lazy, but the chores aren’t going to do themselves. So get up. Get to work. Make it happen.

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There’s something in us, Lord, that wants to wait for someone else to do the work, or at least tell us directly what our part in the work is supposed to be. Grant us diligence and initiative, a readiness to perceive what needs to happen next, and to step forward to accomplish it.