Selected readings from Proverbs 23 found in The Message.
When you go out to dinner with an influential person, mind your manners; don’t gobble your food, don’t talk with your mouth full, and don’t stuff yourself; bridle your appetite.
Oh listen, dear one–become wise; point your life in the right direction. Don’t drink too much wine and get drunk; don’t eat too much food and get fat. Drunks and gluttons will end up on skid row, in a stupor dressed in rags.
Who are the people who are always crying the blues?
Who do you know who reeks of self-pity? Who keeps getting beat up for no reason at all?
Whose eyes are bleary and bloodshot? It’s those who spend the night with a bottle, for whom drinking is serious business.
Don’t judge wine by its label, or its bouquet, or its full-bodied flavor.
Judge it rather by the hangover it leaves you with—
the splitting headache, the queasy stomach.
Do you really prefer seeing double, with your speech all slurred, reeling and seasick, drunk as a sailor? “They hit me,” you’ll say, “but it didn’t hurt; they beat on me, but I didn’t feel a thing.
When I’m sober enough to manage it, bring me another drink!”
Enough said.
Lord, your word can be crystal clear in so many ways. Help us to take to heart what you have said in this chapter about getting too caught up in the pleasures of this life. Protect us Lord. Amen.
