“If you lie down with dogs, you’ll rise with fleas.” (Irish Proverb) When I was a boy our dog, Sparkie, had fleas. We tried everything to get rid of them, powder, spray, washing. The fleas would jump on us. It was bad. Of course this proverb isn’t about fleas; it says that we should be careful about the kinds of people we associate with. That’s what parents through the generations have preached to their children. We’re never too old to hear that sermon again. ;-) Jack
FROM GOOD DEBT JON: Still beats anything you can get from a cat!
FROM REV. J.S. IN MICHIGAN: Does that mean that we should avoid the worst of sinners in our ministry or are we ordained to go out and get some fleas on us (e.g. "sin boldly)?
FROM B.G. IN MICHIGAN: An interesting WW; not sure Jesus would have agreed with it, though.
He was not at all careful about the kinds of people he associated with; it got him into a heap of trouble with religious and political people, many of whom were quite concerned about the hanging out with the dogs of society and catching flees from them. I worry that suburban parents are, indeed, preaching this to their kids and their kids are, in turn, too concerned about mixing it up with people from the “wrong part of town”.
FROM B.S. NEAR ORLANDO: we had a cat Theodore, who gathered fleas to his body also, so on nice warm days we gave him a nice thorough bath and took a tweezer and picked off the fleas. He loved the attention, even when we used Irene's hair dryer to warm him and dry him.
1 comment:
We were thankful our daughter had some very close friends from families that were materially poor but not involved with drugs or anything. But I wonder with this proverb--didn't Jesus lie down with all kinds of dogs? Guess the trick is to see Christ in people who might be thought of as dogs, including us. Then it's OK to be together.
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