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Up A Creek


          Those who trust in their riches will fall, but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf. (Proverbs 11:28)
          People have told me they’re afraid to play Words with Friends with me because I have a fairly impressive vocabulary. I’ve explained to them that knowing all the words that have ever existed doesn’t help when you are provided with seven proportionally random letters that have to fit in with the letters that have already been played. It gets harder when you can only use common nouns and English terms. You can have ninety percent of the money in a Monopoly game, but it’s hard to buy Park Place and Boardwalk if the dice rolls don’t end with you landing on them. Wealth doesn’t matter if the opportunity to use it never presents itself. If you trust in riches, they can only help you when they can help you. When they can’t, you’re up a creek with no paddle.   
               Righteousness, because it is right behavior, is useful 24/7/52.[1] It doesn’t leave you in a lurch. It doesn’t depend on circumstances. The righteous thrive like a green leaf because what they depend on isn’t something outside of themselves. When you're up a creek, righteousness is knowing how to swim.


[1] As a complete side note having nothing to do with the text, it occurs to me that while we say 24/7/365, that’s a non-sequitur. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year. The third number should not be a repetition of days but the number of weeks in a year. It should be 24/7/52.

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