“He who digs a pit will fall into it,
and a serpent will bite him who breaks through a wall.
He who quarries stones is hurt by them,
and he who splits logs is endangered by them.
If the iron is blunt, and one does not sharpen the edge,
he must use more strength,
but wisdom helps one to succeed.
If the serpent bites before it is charmed,
there is no advantage to the charmer.”
Ecclesiastes 10:8-10
In a manufacturing plant, where heavy equipment and powerful machines are in use, you often find a prominent sign on the shop floor tallying the days without injury or accident. I don’t have one of these signs in my home. Accidents do happen there: kids bonk heads, people trip over toys, occasionally there are burns from preparing food. But accidents in the home are typically incidental, and usually not life threatening. But in a machine shop one wrong move, one distraction, or even simply wearing the wrong kinds of clothing can lead to loss of life or limb.
In Ecclesiastes the Preacher sees the inevitability of accidents for workers. Among men who dig pits some will fall in. Those who swing axes will sometimes get hurt. Whenever someone is injured on the job, we should always take heed. After soberly erasing the “days without incident” resetting it to zero, we need to examine the causes and learn from them. We may need to establish new procedures or safety measures to prevent such accidents from happening in the future. Injuries that occur in dangerous environments becomes signs, warnings, wake up calls to the rest.
We live in a dangerous world. We need warnings and signs to keep us safe here. Such are the words of scripture. We can either learn from scripture that dull axes don’t work well and lead to injuries, or we can learn the same thing by taking a dull axe blow to the shin. We can learn to resist temptation and to make no provision for the flesh by reading Romans 13:14, or we can suffer the pain of destruction that comes from sowing to the flesh. We can learn that we need a Savior to purify us from our sins by reading Hebrews (or most anywhere else in the Bible for that matter) or we will find it out on judgment day–albeit on that day it will be too late. The serpent will already have bitten.
Lord, let your Word be the stone that sharpens my dull mind, that instructs my soul with wisdom. Save me from danger. Make me sober to see how easy it can be to slip and fall. Make me alert to the serpents, the temptations, the dangers of sin. Let me learn from your Word and not from my own foolishness. Amen.
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