Proverbs 23:1-3 — Wise Saying #7

READ THIS: Proverbs 23:1-3, Wise Saying #7

1 When you sit to dine with a ruler, note well what is before you, 2 and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony. 3 Do not crave his delicacies, for that food is deceptive.

WHAT’S THIS MEAN, ANYWAY?

"The grass is always greener on the other side." Have you ever heard that phrase? I bet so, but just in case not, it means that no matter how much we have, we can still find a way to think that someone else has the things that we REALLY need. Like, right when we get the coolest Stanley Cup, someone else gets the newest Air Jordans, and suddenly it seems like what we have isn't actually good enough. So, that phrase about the grass sums up a part of what these verses are trying to say. But, there's a bit more to it. Verse 3 calls the food owned by the ruler (the person who has what we think we need...aka the owner of the Air Jordans) "deceptive." How can food/Air Jordans be deceptive?!

There are a few ways to interpret these verses, but I will give you my interpretation. Feel free to comment below with another way of looking at it, but how I see it is this: when we see someone's Air Jordans, we don't see what went into getting those Air Jordans. We don't see the hours of work middle class parents put into making sure their kid didn't look poor. We don't see the divorce between two bickering parents that led to both of them trying to buy the kids' love. We don't see the wife who left her husband, so the husband buys what he can to fill the void in his life. 

We only get to see the shiny side of most people's lives. The greener side. What we don't see is the dirt and the grime. For a ruler and his food, we don't see either the nights of turmoil that a king spent reigning over the land or the nights of torturous slave labor put in so that the king might feast. There are positive and negative reasons that someone might have something we don't, but we better not want something that someone else has when we don't know the full story. 

THINK ABOUT IT:

1.  Who is someone in your life that you feel like always has something better than you (whether it's things they own, personality traits, appearance, etc)? Do you know their full story?

2. In verse two, it talks about gluttony and how dangerous it is. Why do you think gluttony is a bad thing? (Gluttony=always wanting more, often when it relates to food, but it can be about other things, too!)
 
TRY THIS:

Go ask the person from question 1 (or someone like that in your life if it makes more sense for your situation) a PERSONAL question,,,,like "hey, how are you doing, for real? I don't feel like I've gotten to ask you intentionally that question before, so just wanted to check in!" and see what happens!

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