Good Sense

For Thursday, May 3, 2007
Proverbs 21:16

One who wanders from the way of good sense
will rest in the assembly of the dead.

Do you want rest? Do you want to escape the hassles of life? Wander away from good sense. Throw off your responsibilities and act according to instinct and you can live a contented life. It is fairly easy to be contented when you have no responsibility for anyone and do only what you feel like doing at the moment. You will find rest.

Your contented rest, however, comes at the cost of a living death. You are dead spiritually; dead to what is of eternal value and joy. And it is likely you will find an early rest in death literally. Living for the moment usually leads to a shortened life. The catch there is that death does not provide rest. However peaceful a cemetary may seem, the souls of the dead find anything but rest.

The way of sense requires taking on responsibility for how you live and for loving your neighbor. We will practice good sense in some parts of our lives, but it is difficult to exercise good sense in every area. This is not because it is difficult to know what to do, but that we have limits to how much thinking we want to do all the time. Thus, we may practice good sense at our job and wander from good sense at home, or vice versa.

Will you practice good sense today in the home and work or school and everywhere else you may be? Or will you take a stroll away from good sense when it seems inconvenient or too tiring?