The family meeting was held, as always, on Boxing Day in his grandfather’s old house in Bodija, Ibadan. The aunties sat on the long sofa under the photographs. Children ran in and out with plates of rice, and someone kept adjusting the fan because the light was coming and going.
Rotimi sat near the door. He was twenty-seven, a civil engineering graduate from Akure, and it had been nineteen months since he finished his service year. Every morning since then he had woken at half past five and sent applications. He kept a spreadsheet. By that December it had two hundred and fourteen rows, eleven interviews and no offers. Two afternoons a week he taught further mathematics to SS3 students. On Saturdays he helped in his mother’s provisions shop. For three months he had worked on a building site for a contractor who then stopped answering his calls.
Somewhere in the middle of the meeting, the conversation turned to the young people of the family. His father’s elder brother, a retired headmaster with a voice made for assemblies, leaned forward in his chair. “The problem with this generation,” he said, “is that they want white-collar jobs without sweat. The Bible has already said it. Go to the ant, thou sluggard.” He did not look at Rotimi. He did not need to. Everyone else did.
Then the uncle pointed across the room to his own son. Rotimi’s cousin worked for a consulting firm on Victoria Island. He left home at half past four every morning, came back after eleven at night, worked most Saturdays and answered emails during the sermon. He had arrived at the meeting an hour late, phone pressed to his ear, and spent most of the afternoon in the corridor on a call. “That one,” the uncle said with pride, “is a hard worker. That is what diligence looks like.”
Rotimi said nothing. That night he opened his Bible to Proverbs 6 and read it three times, wondering whether his uncle was right. He told me about it some weeks later, with his spreadsheet printed out and folded in his pocket.
His question deserves a careful answer. Is the man who is always busy the faithful one? Is the man who has not yet found work the lazy one? And where does rest belong?
What diligence is
The book of Proverbs speaks often about the diligent, and it sets them against the slothful, the slack and the sluggard. Here is one of its clearest contrasts:
He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame.
The Hebrew word most often translated diligent in Proverbs comes from a root associated with sharpness and decisiveness. The diligent person is keen and attentive. Verse 4 contrasts a “slack hand,” gone loose and lazy, with a hand that grips the work in front of it.
Verse 5 adds timing. In an agricultural society, harvest was a short window, and crops not brought in rotted in the field. The son who slept through harvest was not resting after a season of work. He was absent at the very moment his work mattered most.
So here is a working definition. Diligence is sustained attention to work that should be done. It notices what the season requires and stays with a task until it is finished. Notice that it is not measured by hours, or by exhaustion, or by being visibly busy. A person can work eighteen hours a day and still neglect the work that actually matters. Another can keep reasonable hours and a weekly day of rest while being thoroughly diligent in everything entrusted to him.
Paul gives the New Testament form of the same instruction: “Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord” (Romans 12:11). The word business there means earnestness, and it sits beside fervour of spirit and service to the Lord. For the believer, diligence belongs to worship. We are not working our way into God’s favour. We are working as people who already have it in Christ.
Go to the ant
Now to the passage Rotimi’s uncle quoted. It is worth reading the whole of it, because the uncle quoted only the first line:
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.
“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.” The teacher sends the lazy man to school, and the schoolmaster is an insect. The ant is small, but she has something the sluggard lacks.
“Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler.” The ant does not need a supervisor standing over her. Nobody has to chase her to work. She sees what needs doing and gets on with it. That is the first lesson: diligence is self-directed. It does not depend on someone watching. The diligent employee does the same quality of work whether the manager is in the office or away in Abuja for the week.
“Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.” The second lesson is foresight. The ant works when work is possible, so that she has provision when it is not. And the picture is not one of ceaseless toil. There is a time of gathering and a time of living on what has been gathered. The ant’s diligence has a rhythm.
Then the teacher turns to the sluggard. “How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard?” And he imitates the reply: “Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.” Listen to how reasonable it sounds. Just a little. I will start tomorrow. The sluggard rarely announces that he will do nothing. He simply postpones until the season is gone.
“So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.” The picture is of a prowler on the road. Poverty creeps up on the sluggard like a highway robber, and when it comes it is armed, too strong to resist.
So the sluggard of Proverbs is a specific kind of person. He is able to work, the work is there, the season is open, and he will not rise to it. Everybody sleeps. His problem is that he has made sleep his answer to every call of duty.
Was that Rotimi? He was awake at half past five every morning, two hundred and fourteen applications into a search that had not yet opened a door. Whatever else he was, he was not the man with folded hands. The uncle had the right verse and the wrong man.
PunchlineThe sluggard of Proverbs is able to work, has work to do, and will not rise to it. That description cannot be fastened onto everyone who is struggling.
The disorderly in Thessalonica
The New Testament addresses idleness most directly in Paul’s letters to the church in Thessalonica. In his first letter, Paul had already urged them “to work with your own hands, as we commanded you” (1 Thessalonians 4:11). By the time he wrote again, the problem had grown:
Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us. For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us: for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you; Neither did we eat any man’s bread for nought; but wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you: Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us. For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread. But ye, brethren, be not weary in well doing.
The word translated disorderly described a soldier who had broken rank. In everyday Greek documents of the period, the related verb could describe an apprentice who failed to turn up for work. These believers had stepped out of the ordinary order of responsible life.
Why had they done it? Many connect it with the excitement about the Lord’s return that runs through both letters; Paul has just corrected the idea “that the day of Christ is at hand” (2 Thessalonians 2:2). Whatever the cause, they were “working not at all, but are busybodies.” In Greek this is a play on words: not busy at work, but busy about other people’s work. Idleness had not made them quiet. It had made them meddlesome.
Look at what Paul sets before them. First, his own example: “Neither did we eat any man’s bread for nought; but wrought with labour and travail night and day.” Paul supported himself, probably by tent-making, while he planted the church, though he had every right to be supported: “Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us.”
Second, the rule. “If any would not work, neither should he eat.” The early church shared food with those in need, and Paul does not cancel that care. He simply says it was never meant to support those who could work and refused to. The key word is would. The rule concerns the unwilling. It is not a weapon against the sick, the elderly, the disabled or those searching for work who cannot find it.
Third, the remedy. “That with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.” There is dignity in that phrase, their own bread: the self-respect of providing for one’s household and having something to share.
Then a word to everyone else: “But ye, brethren, be not weary in well doing.” Paul knew that dealing with the idle can make the faithful bitter and stingy. He tells them not to let the failure of a few stop them doing good to all.
Hardship is not proof of laziness
Here we have to be careful, because Proverbs is wisdom literature. It describes the way life generally works in God’s world. The diligent generally prosper. The lazy generally come to want. These are true and dependable patterns, and young people need to hear them. But a general pattern is not a rule without exception, and the Bible itself tells us so.
The same book that warns the sluggard also says this: “Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment” (Proverbs 13:23). The poor man’s field could feed many. His land is productive and his labour is real. But something destroys the harvest: injustice, mismanagement, or a lack of right judgement by those with power over him. The writer of Proverbs knew that poverty can come from forces a hard-working person cannot control.
The Preacher in Ecclesiastes says it even more plainly:
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Verse 10 is a call to diligence: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” Verse 11 tells the truth about results. “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise.” The skilled worker sometimes goes unhired. “Time and chance happeneth to them all.” Economies contract. Industries close. A graduate may do everything right and still wait a long time for the door to open.
Think of Job. His friends looked at his losses and drew a simple conclusion. Eliphaz asked him, “Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent?” (Job 4:7). They assumed that his suffering must be the harvest of something he had sown. They were wrong, and at the end of the book God says so (Job 42:7). Their theology was tidy, and it was cruel.
We can do the same with work. We look at an unemployed young person or a struggling trader and assume laziness, because that explanation is simple and lets us off the hook. Sometimes the person has been idle, and love may need to say so. But often he has been knocking on doors for months while the economy has been shutting them.
If you are in that place, hear this. Your hardship is not, by itself, a verdict on your character. Keep doing what your hand finds to do. Learn a skill. Serve somewhere. Help where you can. Keep applying. But do not let anyone, including the voice in your own head, convince you that a closed door is proof that you are a sluggard.
And if you are looking on, be slow to diagnose. Ask questions before you quote Proverbs. The person you are about to rebuke may have been more diligent than you know.
Busy is not the same as faithful
If hardship is not proof of laziness, then constant activity is not proof of faithfulness either. The uncle held up his son as the picture of diligence. But was he?
Scripture has a sober word for a certain kind of overwork. “Better is an handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit” (Ecclesiastes 4:6). The Preacher had watched people labouring without end, never satisfied, never stopping to ask why. Two full hands sound like success. But if they come with a troubled spirit, one handful with peace is the better portion.
Moses learned this from his father-in-law. He sat from morning to evening judging every dispute himself, until Jethro said, “Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone” (Exodus 18:18). Moses was extremely diligent, and his diligence had become a danger to himself and to the people he served. Faithfulness sometimes means sharing the load.
People can be constantly at work for reasons that are not godly at all. Some are afraid of losing the job or of the bills. Some have fused their sense of worth to their output, so that a quiet day feels like disappearing. Some are avoiding something at home. Some work in a culture that rewards whoever appears busiest. The activity may look like diligence while it is actually serving something else.
Ask yourself honestly why you cannot stop. Is it because the work genuinely requires it in this season? Harvest seasons are real, and there are weeks when every hand is needed. Or is it because something in you believes that if you stop, you will disappear? The first is diligence. The second is a burden Christ never asked you to carry.
The believer’s identity was settled before he did a day’s work. In Christ you are accepted and loved. That changes the ground you work from. You can work hard without needing the work to prove you, and you can stop each evening and each week, because your standing before God never depended on how much you got done.
Come ye yourselves apart
Now to the passage that balances everything we have said. Mark tells us what happened when the apostles came back from their first mission:
And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and told him all things, both what they had done, and what they had taught. And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. And they departed into a desert place by ship privately.
Look at the setting. Jesus had sent the twelve out two by two, preaching, casting out devils and anointing the sick (Mark 6:7-13). Between their sending and their return, Mark tells of the beheading of John the Baptist in Herod’s prison (Mark 6:14-29). So the apostles came back with full reports of what they had done and taught, and with the fresh grief of losing a man they had honoured.
“And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.” Notice who initiates the rest. The disciples did not ask for a holiday. Jesus prescribed it.
Mark explains why: “for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.” The work was not finished. Had Jesus waited for the demand to stop, they would never have rested. So He made rest happen in the middle of the demand.
“And they departed into a desert place by ship privately.” The rest required a deliberate departure. They had to get into a boat and leave. Rest rarely happens by accident in a busy life. It has to be chosen, planned and protected.
What happened next matters too. The crowds ran around the lake and arrived before them, and Jesus “was moved with compassion toward them” and taught them (Mark 6:34). Real life sometimes interrupts our rest, and compassion may call us back sooner than we planned. But the interruption does not cancel the pattern. Jesus Himself kept withdrawing, rising “a great while before day” to pray in a solitary place (Mark 1:35), and withdrawing “into the wilderness” when the crowds pressed in (Luke 5:16).
NuggetIf Jesus called His apostles to rest in the middle of the greatest mission in history, your office, your shop and your ministry can survive your rest too.
Elijah under the juniper tree
There is one more story we need, because some readers are past tiredness. They are depleted.
Elijah had just seen fire fall on Mount Carmel. Then Jezebel threatened his life, and he ran south to Beersheba, left his servant and went on alone into the wilderness:
But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD , take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers. And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat. And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again. And the angel of the LORD came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee. And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God.
“It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life.” This is the prayer of a man who has spent everything. Exhaustion, fear, isolation and a sense of failure have collapsed into one dark conclusion.
Look at what God did first. He did not rebuke Elijah or hand him a new assignment. He let him sleep. Then an angel touched him and said, “Arise and eat,” and there was bread baked on the coals and a jar of water. And the angel came a second time with a reason: “because the journey is too great for thee.”
God treated Elijah’s body as part of his spiritual condition. Sleep and food came before the conversation at Horeb. Only later did God speak in the still small voice, correct his belief that he alone was left (there were seven thousand others, 1 Kings 19:18), and give him Elisha to share the work.
If you have worked yourself into the ground, the most spiritual thing you can do next may be to sleep, eat properly and see a doctor. Persistent exhaustion, low mood, chest pains or high blood pressure are not signs of weak faith to be prayed past quietly. Medical and professional help is part of God’s provision. If you are thinking that life is not worth continuing, speak to someone today: a doctor, a trusted friend, your pastor. The journey has been too great for you, and God is not angry with you for it.
Rhythms of faithful work
How, then, do we hold diligence and rest together? Scripture gives us a rhythm rather than a formula:
Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed.
“Six days thou shalt do thy work.” Diligence is commanded. Six days is a full working week, and the Bible does not apologise for it. “And on the seventh day thou shalt rest.” Rest is commanded too, with the same authority. Both are obedience.
Notice who the rest is for: “that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed.” The Sabbath protected the people who had the least power to protect themselves: the animals, the servants, the foreign workers. A landowner could not keep his workers going seven days a week and call it diligence. Rest was a matter of justice as well as worship.
The believer under the New Covenant does not keep the Sabbath as a requirement for righteousness. Christ is our rest, and sincere believers hold different convictions about how a weekly day of rest should be observed (Romans 14:5-6). But the pattern God built into creation remains good. God “rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made” (Genesis 2:2), and He was not tired. He was showing us the shape of a well-lived life.
Here are some ways to live that rhythm.
Attend to the season. There are harvest weeks: the financial year-end, the exam period, the busy month in the market. Rise to them, and give them your full attention without needing to be watched. Then let them end. A harvest that never ends has become a way of life, and it will wear you away.
Protect a day of rest. Plan it the way the disciples planned their boat trip. Worship with God’s people, eat unhurried meals and sleep. If your job makes Sunday impossible, choose another day and guard it.
Stop each evening. “I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety” (Psalm 4:8). When you lie down, you confess that the world is held by God and not by you.
PunchlineIf you lead others, give them rest. The command in Exodus 23 was addressed to the person with power. Employers, managers and pastors should not reward exhaustion and call it commitment.
If you are searching for work, structure your days. Set hours for applications, learn something and serve somewhere. Then rest without guilt. Waiting for a door to open is hard work of its own kind.
Rotimi’s search lasted another eight months. In August, a firm building drainage channels in Ikorodu called him for an interview, and two weeks later he started as a site engineer. On his first day he was on site before the foreman. Within a few months the project manager was asking for him by name.
But something else happened before that. In March, his cousin collapsed at his desk. His blood pressure was dangerously high, and after a week in hospital the doctor ordered him to take a month off. Rotimi visited him on the third day. His cousin told him quietly that he had not taken a day of leave in three years. “I was afraid,” he said. “If you rest, someone takes your seat.”
Rotimi took out his phone and read him a verse: Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while. His cousin listened with his eyes closed. “Jesus said that?” he asked. “To His disciples?” Rotimi nodded. “In the middle of their busiest season.”
At the family meeting the following Boxing Day, the uncle did not quote Proverbs. His son sat beside him, without his phone, and stayed for the whole afternoon. When the conversation turned to the young people of the family, the uncle said only that he was proud of both of his boys. Rotimi noticed he said both.
Rotimi still works hard and arrives on site early. But he goes home at a reasonable hour, and on Sundays his phone stays off. He told me he keeps the old spreadsheet to remind him that diligence is faithfulness in whatever season you are in, and that rest is part of that faithfulness.
Go to the ant and learn from her. Then go to the boat with Jesus, and rest a while.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- How would you define diligence in your own words after reading this teaching? How does that definition differ from simply working long hours?
- Have you ever judged someone’s hardship as laziness, or been judged that way yourself? What did that experience teach you?
- If you find it hard to stop working, what is the honest reason? Fear, identity, habit, pressure, or something else?
- Jesus called His disciples to rest in the middle of a demanding season. What would “coming apart” look like for you this month?
- If you lead or employ others, how does Exodus 23:12 challenge the way you treat their time and rest?
This Week
Choose one task you have been postponing, “a little sleep, a little slumber,” and finish it before Wednesday. Then choose one evening to stop work at a fixed time and one full day for rest and worship. Plan them in advance, as the disciples planned their boat trip, and keep them. If you have been ignoring signs of exhaustion or ill health, book an appointment with a doctor before the week ends.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You that You accepted me before I did a day’s work, so that I work from Your love and not for it. Make me diligent, like the ant that needs no overseer, faithful to the work You have given me in its season. Keep me from the folded hands of the sluggard and from the restless hands that cannot stop. Where I have judged others for hardships I did not understand, forgive me. Where I have worn myself away, teach me to come apart with You and rest a while. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.