Strength to Rescue

For Thursday, August 9, 2007
Proverbs 24:10-12

10 If you faint in the day of adversity,
your strength is small.
11 Rescue those who are being taken away to death;
hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.
12 If you say, "Behold, we did not know this,"
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,
and will he not repay man according to his work?

What a sobering text! We are to be judged not only by the bad we do, but the good we fail to do. Even more sobering, we will be judged by the One who knows fully our hearts which we daily hide from ourselves. "I didn't know," we may say. But God sees that we did not want to know.

This teaching is invasive. It searches out every place of our hearts. What would happen if we honestly looked about us and saw those "who are being taken away to death"? Who would we see? What would we do about it? How would we "hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter"? I hesitate to give examples because they might blind us to more real situations around us. Who are stumbling to physical slaughter? Who are stumbling to spiritual slaughter? Who are physically beaten? Who are emotionally being broken? What would we see if we saw "slaughter" through the eyes of God? What would we see if we saw our own hearts as he does?

He saw sheep stumbling to slaughter and gave up his Son to hold them back. What do we give up?