False Balances in Life's Providences and Spiritual Worth

Proverbs 20:23 warns against false balances—and we apply them daily to the providences composing our lives. Some possess remarkable skill in dwelling exclusively upon dark things: black aspects, wintry phases, deprivations, bereavements, losses. They grow eloquent recounting what they have surrendered. Yet who proves equally eloquent in numbering mercies? Who penetrates beyond externals—the mere rim of palpable circumstance—into the soul itself, declaring: "I have reason, how can I be poor? I have health, how can I fail? I have home, how can I be desolate?"

When balancing life, include all these reasons and considerations. Then you shall see that God has been making you rich, furnishing possibility and opportunity for acquiring true wealth. Yet we stumble most grievously when weighing present against future. The unsteady hand cannot achieve equipoise; palsied fingers cannot hold the scales. We have enshrined this false balance in proverb: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." This commits sophism. The speaker forgets that everything depends upon that bird in the bush—all possibilities, contingencies, and promises attending its capture if the right way be pursued.

We are enslaved to the present. Some men cannot do justice to spirituality itself. Spiritual teaching counts as nothing; county courts protect those dealing in material goods. But lift a man's soul into new selfhood through prayer and ideas? The court would mock your petition for equitable recompense. Even the best men play this game—unable to help it.