Strangers and Waywards

DEVOTION

PROVERBS

STRANGERS AND WAYWARDS

Prov 27:13

13 Take the garment of one who puts up security for a stranger; hold it in pledge if he does it for a wayward woman.

NIV

Once again we have a repetitive saying, as this is exactly like 20:16. We could just copy and paste, but perhaps there is something else we could see here. Although we did consider the idea of being wise as to who we fall into league with in regards to lending money. The idea is that an honest man might become a beggar, but for a person to make himself a beggar is far worse. To be so foolish to squander all on wayward woman and then have to ask someone for a loan in order to pay creditors is one of the points made here. But what believer would ever even consider spending any amount of money on wayward women? What value does this saying have for us believers? Why would we put up security for a stranger? A stranger implies someone who we do not know, therefore none of the house of faith. Why would we fall into league, become unequally yoked with a non-believer? Yet is not investing in companies which we have no idea of their worldly holdings a form of putting up security for a stranger. We take the advice of someone that it is a good investment, our return will be worth it. Do we know if these companies we invest in have holdings in businesses that promote ideologies we as believers oppose? They would be our strangers. Should someone come and take our garment. The idea is that putting up security is a risk in which all could be lost and then a beggar we would be. That would be making ourselves a beggar. Currently it would seem this could never happen. The market is booming big time and all who have put up security in it are seeing an increase in their wealth, at least on paper. Their dividends are greater now than ever before. Yet we also have the soothsayers, the supposed financial wizards who are predicting a great doomsday crash, like in the late 20”s. They call it a market correction, and all will fall back to as it were before the great increase and some will loss more than they put in. If we invested when it was at twenty thousand and it crashed to fifteen thousand, all would be gone. So let us know the world is on one hand, and we believers are on another and never the twain shall meet. We can have nothing to do with putting up security for a stranger, as companies which support wayward women. We are supposed to walk a different life than that of the world. We are not to partnership in any way with their ideologies or business practices. We are not supposed to support anyone who has dealings with women who live a wayward life. This would be companies who invest in anything that women do that would be considered unpleasing to God. Let’s just leave it at that, without enumerating all the things these women involve themselves in. No we should be living to the beat of a different drummer. We should be living according to the principles laid out before us in the scriptures, all of them, not just cherry picking the ones we like and leaving out the ones we don’t. Let us keep ourselves separate from strangers. We are told to come out from the world. True we come a certain distance, but do we still have one foot in the world? How can we compartmentalize our lives, making our Christian part spiritual, but our physical part worldly? Oh, we could go on and on but we know where we stand and we will surely not be a part of this stranger or those wayward women.