Finish your outdoor work and get your fields ready; after that, build your house (Proverbs 24:27).

At first, this Proverb didn't make much sense to me.  It actually felt kind of counter-intuitive.  I mean, shouldn't you start with the basics like food, water, and shelter -- and then only after these things are established move on to matters of income and employment?  Don't you need a place to sleep before you can rev up the engines of industry?  But as I thought about it further, I realized that these questions actually just go to show how disconnected I really am from the supply chain.  They show how privileged and Western and comfortable I really am.  They show that I've somehow (at least to a certain extent) bought into the idea of the modern welfare state and feel myself somewhat impervious to the ways that real economics work.

Fortunately, Proverbs 24:27 brings me back to reality with a reminder that it's all about putting first things first.

The real questions at hand should be this:  What good is it to have a kitchen if you can't put food on the table?  What good is it to have a fireplace if you haven't laid up a supply of wood?  What good is it to have a mortgage if you can't make the payments and will find yourself shortly evicted?  The fact of the matter is that food doesn't just fall from the sky; it has to be cultivated, grown, and harvested.  The fuel to keep ourselves warm (and to power our vehicles and electric devices) isn't just magically produced by wishing for it or asking for it.  It all starts with hard work -- whether in actual farming or some other means of generating income to pay for these equivalents in our more complicated modern economy.  In truth, it probably is better to sleep in a sleeping bag in a tent while starting to work than it is to secure housing and such before filling out job applications.  It's better to finish our "outdoor work" and get our "fields" ready before building (or buying, or signing a rental contract) on our house.

It all comes down to putting first things first.  We'd all do well to think more along these lines when planning our lives.  Yes, of course it applies to issues of employment and housing.  But it also applies to relationships, sex, parenthood, investments, schooling, church involvement, and other things like that.  What does it really mean to put first things first?  We so often turn these things into complicated "chicken-or-egg" scenarios, when in fact common sense and the Bible offer far more insight than we typically believe.