The LORD is watching everywhere,
keeping his eye on both the evil and the good

Proverbs 15:3

In the board/video game Pandemic, players are tasked with stopping a colossal outbreak that can destroy the world. With each round, a new country gets infected, forcing players to work together to stop the flow of the virus. While your team scrambles to give medical attention to China, South Africa could be in danger. Being a multitasker comes in handy here.

A simple error is to assume that Proverbs are too black and white. If you do good, good things happen. If you do evil, you shouldn’t make long-term plans to stay on God’s earth. While Proverbs marries righteousness with blessing and condemns wickedness with death, there is room for thriving evil.

In many situations, God chooses to tolerate wrongdoing, but his promise to monitor situations should reassure us. Every instance of your life, good and bad, righteous and naughty, helpful and disruptive, resides in God’s memory, set up to be dealt with at a particular time.

This fact should give us cause for celebration as we see that all addictions, injustices, and inequalities will get fixed, but it should also remind us that no part of our personality will get overlooked. God has a plan for your bad habits and behavior.

A relationship with Jesus must be a priority, as he is the only one who offers to fix our problems and right our wrongs.

May God’s monitoring of the earth be a source of comfort and inspiration for you.

FIGURE IT OUT:

Colossians 1:16-21

16 for through him God created everything
in the heavenly realms and on earth.
He made the things we can see
and the things we can’t see—
such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.
Everything was created through him and for him.

17He existed before anything else,
and he holds all creation together.

18Christ is also the head of the church,
which is his body.
He is the beginning,
supreme over all who rise from the dead.fn
So he is first in everything.

19For God in all his fullness
was pleased to live in Christ,

20and through him God reconciled
everything to himself.
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth
by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

21¶This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions.

  1. Circle all the words and phrases that jump out to you
  2. What is God/Jesus’ responsibility here?
  3. What is our response/responsibility here?
  4. What does this reading inspire or motivate you to do?