Proverbs 1:17: A pretty trap gone to waste

“For in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird,”
-Proverbs 1:17

My grandfather is a deer hunter, and I remember one time having a conversation with him about the feeders. For those who don’t know, these feeders sit up on stands and, at the same time every day, whirl out corn in a wide circle. It’s somewhat noisy, but it shoots out the food within sight on the deer stand, where the hunter is hiding. The hope is that the deer would come to eat in front of the hunter.

I had this conversation with him because he was going out to the location well before deer season started to put feed in the feeder. That didn’t make much sense to me immediately, but when he explained it, it did.

What if you go out hunting, and the very morning you plan to hunt, you set up the feeder, then you set up your stand and climb inside? And then the feeder goes off noisily, and you wait.

You’ll never get a deer. Why? Because you set up the trap right in front of them. They aren’t completely stupid. They certainly noticed this guy setting up a new feeder and a new stand and climbing inside.

But if the feeder has been there a while, and it shoots out its feed every day, even though there’s no one around, and if the stand has been there years, then they probably won’t notice that a guy slipped into the stand before dawn.

Solomon is using this very analogy to describe the schemes of sinners. They work really hard to achieve their goals, but they have no real chance to accomplish them.

Oh, left to our own devices, we can certainly accomplish things. We can build a business, or we could get away with crime, or we could score with that hot girl from the bar, or we can be secure financially.

But it is all temporary. When we seek out security, love, or life, we may get it for a season, but then it’s gone.

We’ve really gained nothing at all.

Jesus one time told the religious leaders of His time this: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40).

It wasn’t that they were looking for the wrong thing, but they were working extremely hard in the wrong way. They were setting this elaborate trap right in front of the bird.

The answers you seek are not in one night stands or more money or power or in friends or even spirituality. They are in Christ. He paid the price for our mistakes and crimes on the Cross. If we repent of our old ways, those silly traps we set in front of birds, and come to Him, we will find that He is the only source for eternal life.