Don't eat the Honey!

Ok, so maybe that title is a little bit of an exaggeration, but I would like to urge you to reduce your intake of honey today.

Honey is a wonderful thing as a nice natural sweetener that you are welcome to use, but even too much of a good thing can cause problems. If you've ever had too much honey at one sitting, you probably have experienced some unpleasant consequences, including stomach cramps, bloating, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. 

So yes, we should not eat that much honey because we will figuratively choke on it as we push it down our system.

Now I shall write a beautiful seg-way into our spiritual application today.

Done. Proverbs 25:27 uses an analogy of eating too much honey to make a compelling point of how we should live our lives. In it, we read,

"It is not good to eat much honey: so for men to search their own glory is not glory."

So glory is something that we all kinda desire and long to possess in our lives, but just like honey, one can receive too much of a this good thing. The Proverb here implies that if we are seeking out our own glory, then we will inevitably receive too much glory that will probably more likely leave us uncomfortable.

 If I look back to my own life, I can definitely find this statement to be true. My senior year of high school, I was the President of my debate club, and as president, I was "required" to coordinate all of our evidence sharing.

I had some difficulty at times getting people to actively participate in the evidence sharing, which meant a lot of me yelling over email and trying to demonstrate the obligations of the club members.

But I did this without thinking about the Lord and the way the Lord would have me handle the situation. Instead, my focus was on ensuring I was the best debate president I could be.

But whenever my debate coach would acknowledge my astounding efforts in class (trust me, they were pretty astounding :)), I would feel uncomfortable and like I was undeserving of any such recognition or glory.

Yet deep down, that is what I was searching for throughout that entire year, so why did it hurt when I actually received it?

Probably because "It is not good to eat much honey: so for men to search their own glory is not glory."