“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 60
“He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame” (Prov. 10:5).
In Scripture business is closely related to family. But this is not a ancient truth, relevant only for agrarian societies. Today the backbone of our economy is small family business, and even a large percentage of Fortune 500 businesses are still family businesses. The word economics comes from the Greek word for household management. And all this means that we must beware of the false dichotomy that puts family issues over here, and work over there.
There are several striking lessons to take from this proverb, and they both have to do with harvest-the time for gathering the fruit of your labors. On a farm, the harvest is at harvest. But every business has a harvest time, and every worker has a time of harvest. For a restaurant owner, the daily harvest could be lunch hour. For a merchant, it could be the Christmas season. For a school or college, harvest is frequently enrollment and convocation. A father raising a son has a time of harvest as well-and how he has done in the harvesting of sons is frequently seen in whether that son’s reaction to hard, physical work is an allergic reaction or not. In other words, a business harvest is often the time to measure how one has done in the family harvest also. A businessman who has not taught his son to work is a businessman who should be ashamed. His son should be ashamed, but is not; the father should be ashamed, and frequently is-because he at least knows what work is. What he did not know was how to impart that work ethic to his son.
And of course, the other lesson from this proverb is the simple and straightforward one. Work is not just to be hard, it is to be timely and seasonal. There is a time for twelve hour days, but not all the time.