AP

Proverbs 15:3  The eyes of the LORD are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.

The verb ‘keeping watch’ in this verse (‘tzaphah’) can apply to either guarding someone for their protection, or spying out someone involved in a doubtful activity.

I remember in my youth group days we used to choose a Bible verse to serve as a motto each year and one year we chose Genesis 31:49 (where the same word is used) – “The LORD watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another.” (KJV).  We, of course intended it in the good sense of depending on God’s fatherly care of us throughout each week between our gatherings, and I only realised many years later that the actual context of it was Laban warning his ‘cheating’ son-in-law/nephew, Jacob, after he caught up with him at Mizpah, not to do the wrong thing by his two daughters, Leah and Rachel, when he took them back to Canaan!

In today’s verse, Solomon is reminding HIS son of the LORD’s ever-WATCHful eye.  Most times I am very thankful for, and comforted by, the Lord’s ‘watchful’ eye, protecting me from potential danger, or from my own stupidity or carelessness!  But there are also many times when it is good for me to remember that NONE of my thoughts or actions escapes the watchful eye of a HOLY God who loves me so much that he GAVE his Only Son to die to REDEEM me and establish me in his Covenant Family.  I need to ask myself often, “Does this action/thought/attitude reflect the family likeness I SHOULD have as a child of such a holy, loving God?”  It is good for us to remember the FUTILITY of Adam-and-Eve’s attempt to HIDE from God after they had succumbed to the tempter’s pressure to disobey the rules for happy and fulfilling living in the Garden (Genesis 3:1-13).