Don’t give sleep to your eyes or slumber to your eyelids. Get yourself free like a gazelle from a hunter, like a bird from the hand of a fowler. Go to the ant, you lazy person; observe its ways and grow wise. The ant has no commander, officer, or ruler. Even so, it gets its food in summer; gathers its provisions at harvest. Proverbs 6:4-8
“Run not into debt, either for wares sold, or for money borrowed; be content to want things that are not of absolute necessity, rather than to run up the score; such a man pays at the latter end a third more than the principal comes to, and is in perpetual servitude to his creditors, lives uncomfortably, is necessitated to increase his debts to stop his creditors’ mouths, and many times falls into desperate courses.”
Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676) in Day’s Collacon, compiled and arranged by Edward Parsons Day (New York: IPPO, 1884) 166.
I am deepening my research linked to debt to see what voices through church history have to say about this leading limiting factor to generosity. Three phrases grip me from this quote.
(1) “Be content to want things that are not of absolute necessity.” What beautiful wisdom! The world says that we must have things and have them now. Be content merely to want things you don’t really need.
(2) “Run up the score…perpetual servitude.” Rather than position us to live, give, serve, and love like Jesus, when we run up debt two things happen: we overpay (limiting our capacity) and it enslaves us (limiting our ability).
(3) “Lives uncomfortably.” Debt often promises comfort and pleasure and delivers the opposite. If you are in it, like a gazelle from a hunger…run away! The paradox is that comfort only comes with freedom and contentment.
Solomon points us to the ant as the role model. Without ruler or chief, it does what God made it to do. Each one labors not for itself but for the colony. Hard work coupled with generous sharing is God’s design in creation!
Likewise, when we work hard and share generously so that everyone around us has enough, we live, give, serve, and love following God’s design for us. Getting rid of debt moves us in this direction.