'The devil makes work for idle hands’ is first recorded in the fourth century by Jerome, and in English in Chaucer’s ‘Tale of Melibeus’, in the Canterbury Tales, around 1400.* Idleness always creates space for wayward behaviour. Today this idleness is measured by failure to take action. How long Lazarus sat in poverty and pain at the rich man’s gate we don’t know, but for quite some time I imagine – as if he was invisible to all who stepped over him entering the house.
