I’ve just been re-reading a beautiful old book by Charles Spurgeon called Farm sermons that I bought it at an antique shop some years ago. It’s a beautiful book with gorgeous illustrations and lots of great truths. The first chapter is called The Sluggard’s Farm, inspired by the passage in Proverbs 24v30-32.
Let me share a few thoughts with you:
Spurgeon finishes the chapter by saying, “Am I employing the minutes as they fly? This man had a vineyard, but he did not cultivate it; he had a field, but he did not till it. Do you, brethren, use all your opportunities? I know we each one have some power to serve God; do we use it? Do we sow beside all waters? Do we in the morning sow our seed, and in the evening stretch out our hand; for if not, we are rebuked by the sweeping censure of Solomon, who saith that the slothful is a man’void of understanding…the possession of a vineyard and a field involved responsibilities upon the sluggard which he never fulfilled, and therefore he was devoid of understanding. What is your position, dear friend? A father? A master? A servant? A mother? A minister? A teacher? Well, you have your farms and your vineyards in those particular spheres…
The slothful farmer could have tilled the field and cultivated the vineyard of his had chosen to do so. He was not a sickly man, who was forced to keep his bed, but he was a lazybones who was there of choice….
May I ask you to look into your own house and home? It is a dreadful thing when a man does not cultivate the field of his family. O that we may so live among our children that they may not only love us, but love our Father who is in heaven. May fathers and mothers set such an example of cheerful piety that sons and daughters shall say, “Let us tread in our father’s footsteps, for he was a happy and a holy man. Let us follow our mother’s ways, for she was sweetness itself.”
Tomorrow is only found in the calendar of fools; today is the time of the wise man, the chosen season of our gracious God. “