MDB 54: Proverbs 5

Prov 5:3-4: The lips of a forbidden woman drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

There is no word more frequently heard and nothing more passionately desired in life than love. Everyone wants it, and endless songs and stories celebrate it, sometimes triumphantly, when a couple meets and lives 'happily ever after', but sometimes tragically also, when love turns out to be false and those who thought they had found it turn away bitterly disappointed.

God is a God of love and so it is not surprising that his creatures should want what he has and is ready and eager to give us. It was because he loved the world that he sent his Son to die for us, and if we believe in him then that love and the salvation it brought become ours to cherish, both in this life and in eternity.

Yet we know that very often things do not turn out that way. Some people find it impossible to believe that God really cares about them - they think they are too unimportant, or that they have sinned too much for God to forgive them. The novelist William Golding refused to call himself a Christian because he thought he was not good enough to be one. He failed to understand that God's love is given to the undeserving, not to those who think they are entitled to it. None of us is ever good enough!

But many people are deceived in a different way. They see the bright lights of this world and are taken in by them, thinking that fame and fortune lie just around the corner. How many there are who have ruined their lives by pursuing goals that forever elude them! In them, the desire for love has become lust, and when they taste the fruit they long to have, it turns bitter in their mouths. No advice is more relevant to us today than what this proverb tells us - be wary of what looks good to the eye but will do untold damage to the soul. Pray for wisdom and understanding to seek what is right and to be protected from the lure of false attractions that will lead us nowhere and bring only sadness and disillusion in their wake.