Keeps on

DEVOTION

PROVERBS

KEEPS ON

Prov 27:15-16

15 A quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping on a rainy day; 16 restraining her is like restraining the wind or grasping oil with the hand.

NIV

Is there anything worse than a leaking roof in a rainstorm? It is not just the rain coming in, but it soaks everything in the house, things that are not supposed to get wet. We might try to put a bucket under the leaking, but the rain keeps coming and we run out of buckets or we just cannot keep up with all the leaks. It is so frustrating and maddening to see everything being ruined. It is going to take a lot of work to clean everything up and maybe a lot of money to replace all the ruined items. But the point is the rain keeps coming and so it is with a quarrelsome wife. She keeps on and on being quarrelsome and never quits. Yet there is nothing that can be done about her, just as with the leaking roof. No one can change her, for that matter we cannot change anyone except ourselves. It seems we are always wanting others to change for our benefit and in all reality we are the only ones we can change. So it is with this dripping roof in the rainstorm, we cannot do anything about while it is raining, but we try to contain the leak, but we will fail eventually, because it keeps pouring in. All we can do is resign ourselves to what happens next. This wife will not be changed by our trying to contain her either. We see the comparisons the writer makes. It is like trying to grasp the wind, or getting a handful of oil. It cannot be done. So we need to understand that quarrelsome wife will create much damage and chaos as the leaking roof does. We might run around trying to keep the damage to a minimum, but in all reality she will just keep on keeping on creating more damage and chaos. Nothing can be done about the roof until the rain stops, and so it is with the quarrelsome wife. The problem is the rain is not stopping, the writer does not give us a time frame on the storm. So we may not know when the quarrelsome wife will hold back her tongue. So we just have to wait her out as we do the rainstorm, hoping and praying she will stop.