Day 13

 

Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Worse

 

 

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."

 

 

Hebrews 13:8

 

Have you ever had one of those days where everything seems to go wrong? You have plans and you envision certain things happening and somehow you are sent down some alternative path that takes bizarre twists and turns you could never imagine.

 

It was Saturday  and I needed to get my car inspected. It was already past due and I didn't want to risk being caught with an expired inspection sticker. Normally the odds of being pulled over in a big city for a late inspection sticker are pretty slim, but I had a date that night which meant I had to drive through a little incorporated village that the city of Houston had surrounded. That little village had a police force that was known for pulling over young men with long hair, which was exactly what I was.

 

The place I usually got my car inspected was closed, so I went to the local mall where there was a Montgomery Ward with an automotive department. My plan was to get my car inspected in the morning, come home for an afternoon off and then go to my girlfriend's for our date. That was the plan but that was not what happened.

 

I got to Montgomery Ward not long after it opened and asked to get my car inspected and they informed me that there was a few cars ahead of me so it would be about an hour. Hanging around the mall for an hour was not problem, so I went window shopping for an hour and came back.

 

I was told that they hadn't got to my car yet, so I settled down in their waiting room and began to watch a Marx Brothers movie on TV. I checked on the car periodically and they kept saying, "a little longer."

 

I was young and had long hair and it wasn't the first time I thought I was being treated unfairly because of my appearance. I waited patiently, watched the whole Marx Brothers movie, had lunch and waited some more.

 

After 6 hours they finally got to my car. I watched them inspect it and though everything was fine. However, I was told my car hadn't passed inspection because a rear tail light did not come on. They offered to fix it for me and charge me for it and then my car would pass inspection. I opened my trunk and found that the light had somehow come unplugged (perhaps their doing, I don't know). I plugged it in and said, "Now it works. Can I get my inspection sticker?"

 

"No," the guy said. I didn't work when I inspected it, so you don't pass. That will be $6.00"

 

I went ballistic. You mean to tell me you are going to charge me $6.00 when I waited here 6 hours to get my car inspected and you flunked it even though there is nothing wrong?"

 

"Yes," he said. "That will be $6.00."

 

"No way," I told him. "There is no way I am ever going to pay you a penny." I grabbed my keys, jumped in the car and left. I never shopped at Montgomery Ward again, and it is probably the loss of my business that made them go bankrupt.

 

When I got home I was boiling over mad and had just enough time to get cleaned up and head for my girlfriend's. I walked in the door and my mom asked, "Where have you been all day?"

 

It was an innocent enough question, but it was the wrong question. I slammed the kitchen counter so hard with my fist that a glass jumped off and shattered on the floor. I lost the feeling in a couple of my fingers for a few days. I took a shower, got dressed and cautiously headed for my girlfriend's. I thought at least the day would end all right.

 

I got to my girlfriend's house and rang the doorbell. She opened the door and started crying. "My parents wont let me see my best friend anymore. They say she is a bad influence. My parents hate her!"

 

I was being tortured as she cried on my shoulder. I had my own reasons for not liking the girl. Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, it had.

 

We all have days like that. There are times when it is hard to believe that things could go so wrong. The good news is that, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." He is our constant companion through the good and the bad and for all eternity. He will always be the same loving, caring Savior that you came to know that first day you were saved. When all else fails he will be constant and true.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read Hebrews 13:5-8

 

• Why can we be content?
• How can we not be afraid?
• Who are we to imitate and take courage from?

 



 

Day 12

 

The Argument

 

"Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice."

 

Proverbs 13:10 

 

I was arguing with my parents again. I don't know what it was about. I was in college and free to do just about anything I pleased. I was a good kid and not getting into any kind of trouble or doing things I wasn't supposed to do. I still chafed at my parent's authority though they seldom tried to exert it. We argued about my hair (long, as in hippie long) and one of my girlfriends (turned out they were right about her).

 

Like I said, I don't even know how this argument got started, but it had taken a bizarre twist. Somehow it had got to the point where I was claiming I could beat Billie Jean King in tennis. I know that's crazy, but that was my story and I was sticking to it. The truth was I had played tennis about 3 times in my life. I could not beat Billie Jean King. I could not have beaten Martin Luther King, but I was not going to back down.

 

Then my father said something I'll never forget. "Your problem is you are too proud." As soon as he said it I knew it was true. There was nothing I could say, he was right.

 

That argument stopped and there were no others. It was my pride that started all of them, and when I kept that in check they went away.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read Daniel 4:4-37

 

• What was Nebuchadnezzar's dream?
• How did Daniel interpret the dream?
• What was it that triggered the dream into becoming a reality?
• What brought sanity back to Nebuchadnezzar?

 

Day 11

 

If It's Good Enough for My Father

 

"These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."

 

Deuteronomy 6:6-7

 

Paula's dad was an alcoholic. He had been known to be a little violent when he was drunk. Paula was in high school and had learned to fear her father. Her greatest fear was that her dad would one day hurt her younger brother.

 

I was in college and Paula was my friend. She would call me up on the phone and we would discuss her fears. She told me,  "I have seen what alcohol can do. I will never touch a drop."

 

Sometime later I heard that someone had to go to a local club in the middle of the night and give Paula a ride home. She was drunk. I called to see what had happened. I told her, "Why, of all people, knowing what alcohol can do to you, why did you go out and get drunk?"

 

I'll never forget her answer. "If it's good enough for my father, it's good enough for me."

 

Obviously it wasn't good for her father or for her. At the time, as young as I was, I couldn't understand it. Now, I know that way too often parents pass down things to kids that should never be passed down.

 

God's plan is that we should pass down a heritage of faith to our kids. His commands are to be ingrained in our hearts and demonstrated in our actions so that our children cannot help but catch them and own them for themselves. We are to go beyond just hoping they catch them though. We are to systematically teach them. This is primarily a parent's job not the church's job.

 

In Exodus 20 with the command to not make idols, God warns that the sins of a father can last generations. The Bible also teaches that we all have free wills. Paula did not have to choose to follow her father's footsteps. His actions just made her making the right choice a lot more difficult.

 

Years and years after this happened I got a phone call from Paula. By that time I had made several moves and was living in a different state so how she got my phone number I'll never know. She called to tell me that after years away from God she had had straightened her life out. She had a child of her own and had married a good Christian man. I was delighted to hear it. Now she can pass down the right kind of heritage to her child.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read Deuteronomy 6:1-25

• What is the command that Jesus will later say is the greatest command? (v.5)
• To what lengths were they to go to in order to teach the commands to their children?
• What were they to be careful not to forget? 

If you enjoy reading this blog you might want to join my email devotion service, "A Look At The Word."  Just about every Tuesday morning a devotional message will be emailed directly to your inbox. The messages are much like these but come more from today's news items rather than personal stories. Not all email accounts accept messages from this professional service, but most do. All I need is for you to message me your email address and I will add you to the "A Look At The Word" list. Up coming devotionals will include messages on coffin therapy, unicorns and deep frying guns. I would love to have you join.

 





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 10

 

Speak the Truth in Love

 

"Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is Christ."

 

Ephesians 4:15

 

 

A girlfriend once asked me what I thought of her dress. It was clearly one of her favorites and just the fact that she asked me should have sent warning flares up in my brain. Back then I had not yet realized the need for a relationship warning system to be installed. I also had a problem discerning the truth from my opinion. So, I told her what I thought about the dress.

 

Now before I tell you what I said, in my defense, the dress was polka-dotted. Lots and lots of tiny polka-dots. Get ready to cringe because here is what I said, "I hate the dress. It makes you look fat. It has way too many dots."

 

For the official record, this girl has never had a fat day in her life. She was born doing Tae Bo and had to wear athletic cut diapers. But clearly from the look on her face my answer was not the answer she was looking for. Not being a total idiot (just 95% idiot), I quickly added, "I don't think you're fat. I just think the dress makes you look fat. It's the dots. The...uh...dots."

 

The bible tells us we are to speak the truth in love. Sometimes the loving thing to do is to just keep your mouth shut. Besides when Paul tells us to speak the truth in love, he is talking about the truth of Christian instruction, not fashion tips. He is warning us not to use the truth as a weapon to tear somebody down, but as a tool to build somebody up.

 

So, I want to apologize to this girl (now woman), who shall remain nameless. (She has a name, I am just not going to use it). Her memory of this may be different than mine or it may be a repressed memory that I have once again brought to the surface. She is now married and her husband, whom I've never seen, might be bigger than me, so I double apologize. I apologize for the remark about the dress and for so many other things. I apologize for harboring ill feelings towards your wiener dog. He was a great dog but his little claws put a run in my favorite pair of polyester slacks. I apologize for thinking that your Christmas tree without any needles on the limbs was kind of depressing. It was a beautiful tree and y'all did an amazing job flocking it. I just thought evergreens were supposed to be green but I really have no room to talk because our tree was made from aluminum and was only green when that color came around on the color wheel. I could keep going because my offenses were legion, but let me say once again, sincerely - I apologize.

 

Upon Further Review

 

Read Ephesians 4:14-16

 

• What can happen to us if we remain infants in Christ?
• Speaking the truth in love is supposed to help people grow like whom?
• Does speaking the truth in love break us apart or help us grow together?



 

 

 

 

 

 Day 9

The Cruella De Vil Wannabe

 

"Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed, Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death."

 

James 1:14-15

 

Once I had to clean out a house that had way too many dogs living in it. It's hard to say how many dogs there were because they didn't line up to be counted.

 

The church I grew up in had a rent house. The church had bought property that it had future plans for that had a house on it. Since the property and the house were not needed at that time the house was rented out to this guy. After a while it became apparent that the man had too many dogs living with him. The church tried to handle it peacefully, but it came down to the man being evicted. The dogs also had to be evicted. The dog catcher was called out and he began to collect dogs. For some reason the number 52 sticks in my mind. That may not be accurate, but I guarantee you it was a lot of dogs.

 

As the final 3 or 4 dogs were being round up, my friend and I were called in for clean-up duty (make that clean-up doody). We were young, in college and expendable. The man who had been evicted showed up and hassled the dog catcher. The dog catcher called the cops who hauled the man away as the dog catcher hauled the dogs away.

 

My friend and I headed into the house armed with shovels, brooms and a garden hose. It was incredibly bad. You could only work in the house for as long as you could hold your breath and then you had to rush for an open window. Though the dogs lived in the house, none of them were house broken. I'm not even sure that the man was house broken.

 

How do you get to a place where you are living with 52 dogs that have pooped all over the place? We couldn't even breath in the place, yet the man ate and slept there. How do you decide that living with 52 dogs is a good idea? What went wrong? Was he traumatized by 101 Dalmatians as a child? Did he have a Cruella De Vil fixation? I can just see it:

 

Little Timmy and his mom sat in the theater as the credits to 101 Dalmatians began to roll. All the other children and parents were leaving but little Timmy sat there with tears running down his face. His mother asked, "What's wrong Timmy?"

"It's Cruella De Vil, Mom. Why did they have to be so mean to her?"

"But Timmy, Cruella wanted to hurt the puppies."

"Not you too, Mom. You don't understand...I hate Pongo!"

Timmy's mom was suddenly glad everyone else had left the theater. She took Timmy by the hand and as they slowly walked out the theater she could hear Timmy softly singing, "Cruella De Vil, Cruella De Vil. If she doesn't scare you no evil thing will."

 

Okay, it probably didn't happen exactly like that. The man probably never sat out to live in absolute filth with 52 dogs, it just happened over time. First it is 2 or 3 dogs and then one day you don't use the pooper scooper. You get used to the smell, you get more dogs and before you know it you've got more poop than a zoo and enough dogs to enter several teams in the Iditarod.

 

In James 1 we are told, "Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death." (James 1:14-15) It happens to all of us, something that starts out small turns into one big sinful problem. Most of us don't do it in such spectacular fashion as the guy with the dogs, but we do it. We don't have a growing pack of dogs, we have a growing pack of pride or gluttony. Whatever our problem may be, the result is the same. We need our house cleaned up.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read James 1:13-18

 

• What is the root of temptation?
• When sin is full grown what does it give birth to?
• Through what does the Father give us birth?
• What is the result of that birth from the Father?

 



The Random Driven Life

 

Day 8

 

Be Careful What You Pray For

 

"The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."

 

James 5:16

 

I had gone to a conference where a speaker had said if we wanted to develop some godly attributes in our life we should pray for them. I was a single college student at the time and a previous girlfriend had told me I was conceited. My initial reaction was to think, "Oh, yeah! And who are you to tell me I'm conceited? I'm too good for the likes of you!" (I guess that explains why she was a previous girlfriend).  After I thought about it for a while I decided she might have something there, so I started praying for humility.

 

I had just started dating a girl who had been a homecoming queen, which was kind of counterproductive to the humility thing. We had a date on Saturday night, but on Friday night my older brother was getting married. We were all getting ready for the wedding on Friday when my older brother, suffering from a case of nerves I guess, somehow managed to accidentally flush the toilet paper spindle down the toilet int the upstairs bathroom. He volunteered to come back on Saturday and fix it, but I told him, "Hey, it's your honeymoon. I'll take care of the toilet." God was at work; humility was on its way.

 

The next morning I got the toilet unbolted from the floor and managed to lug it down the stairs and out into the front yard. The toilet spindle was wooden and had gotten firmly wedged into the U-section of the toilet. I stuck my hand in as for as I could go but part of what I grabbed was not the spindle. A friend stopped by and saw me wrestling the toilet and had a good laugh. Eventually, with the help of a garden hose, I was finally able to dislodge the spindle and fix the toilet.

 

I went on my date with the homecoming queen that night and everything was going well. We were going to get something to eat after a movie, so I purposely took her to a place that our circle of friends seldom went to, but when we arrived many of our friends were there. God was at work; humility was on its way.

 

They were our friends so we had to sit with them. Still, everything seemed fine, we were laughing and joking with our friends when the guy who had seen me that morning said, "Tell them what you had to do this morning." Not being one to pass up a chance to tell a good story, I told them about lugging the toilet downstairs, finding disgusting little surprises in the toilet when I stuck my hand in it and how humiliating it was to see people drive by our house and see me wrestling a toilet. Everyone thought the story was hilarious... everyone except my date, the homecoming queen. Perhaps she was thinking, "I've just been holding a hand that has recently been in a toilet."

 

After that every time I called her for a date she was going to be busy washing her hair that night. I got to thinking about the whole thing. I remembered the people driving by laughing at the toilet wrestler and my new previous girlfriend with the really clean hair and I realized that God had answered my prayer. I prayed for humility and I had been humbled.

 

They say, "Be careful what you pray for. You just might get it." I don't think God is waiting to catch us on a technicality in our prayers so he can mess with us. God is not like that. But I do think that if we ask for something that is truly good for us then we best be ready.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read Galatians 5:22-23

 

• How might the Spirit produce patience in us?
• How might the Spirit produce self-control in us?
• Is the pathway to some virtues always easy?

Day 7

 

The Government Field Trip

 

"It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way."

 

Proverbs 19:2

 

It started out as an innocent school field trip, but it almost ended in a tragic accident. My high school required that you go on some sort of field trip for you government class. This trip was not with the whole class on a bus but was to be done on your own time in the summer between your junior and senior year and you were to observe some official government function. A lot of kids went to a local traffic court to observe a few cases (maybe their own), but my friends and I had bigger plans. We went to downtown Houston for a murder trial.

 

My best friend's dad worked downtown so we rode with him into town and he parked his car on the top floor of a parking garage. The dad went to his office and we went to the courthouse. We sat and watched the case of this guy for whom the future did not look good. We doodled pictures of the defendant with a rope around his neck and had to be told by the judge to be quiet when a witness said something that was pretty funny and wasn't aware that he had done it.

 

On our lunch break we quickly grabbed a bite to eat and went to Foleys, this huge department store. I bought the coolest rope braid belt to wear with my button fly bell bottoms. I was very pleased with my purchase.

 

When it came time to leave we went to meet my friend's dad at his office and then on to the parking garage to get the car. The dad, his son and another friend started walking up the ramp to get to the car several stories above us, but 2 of us decided to go by a quicker route. My friend's dad tried to discourage us from our plan, but it looked to be an adventure to us so we ignored his advice.

 

The parking garage had valet parking if you wanted to pay extra and the parking attendants had this cool conveyor belt elevator they rode.  The conveyor belt had foot holds and hand holds that you used. You put one foot on the foot hold and reached up and grabbed a hand hold and up you went straight up an elevator shaft. At the top the conveyor belt just flipped over and you could get on it going down, so while some were going up the conveyor belt others were on the backside going down.

 

I'm pretty sure that this device was for employees only but since it looked cool I wasn't going to let that little detail stop me. So, with one hand gripping my shopping bag with the precious rope braid belt I stepped on to the conveyor belt and reached up with my other hand and grabbed the hand hold. My friend got on below me and up we went. It moved faster than I thought and I confess I was enjoying the ride and not paying enough attention to what was going on. As I neared the top I suddenly realized I had a problem.

 

I was facing the wrong direction to get off and I needed to somehow quickly turn around and step off the conveyor belt before it passed the top floor and then flipped over and started heading down. By the time I processed all my options I didn't have any options, I had missed the top floor. I was up in a metal building on the top of the parking garage that housed the motor for the conveyor belt and the conveyor belt was about to flip over and head back down. That meant I could do a one armed hand stand all the way down or, most likely, plummet several stories down the elevator shaft.

 

I was not a big fan of either of those options so, as the conveyor belt flipped over, I got off on a beam the motor was mounted on in the roof of the metal building. I hollered down at my companion below me to quickly get off because it was a one person perch on that beam.

 

He got off and I tossed down my shopping bag with the cool belt to him because the belt was expensive and I might need to wear it to my funeral. I also needed both hands. I figured I could lower myself from the beam by my hands and do a swinging dismount like it was some kind of high bar routine. It was a bit dangerous but preferable to calling the fire department to rescue me.

 

It took a few minutes to sum up the courage to do this so my friend's dad arrived at the top of the parking garage just in time to witness my flying dismount. He never told my parents what happened. He did have heart trouble a few years later and I probably contributed to that.

 

The Bible says, "It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way." (Proverbs 19:2) In my youthful zeal I almost missed the way permanently. The biblical model is for younger men to learn from wiser, older men and not to rush foolishly into things they don't understand.

 

I never rode one of those conveyor belt things again. Years later my rope braid belt was mistakenly put in a bag of clothes that went to a homeless shelter. It's a shame too, because it sure would look cool with my suits on Sunday mornings and now I have to come up with another cool belt for my funeral.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read 1 Peter 5:1-5

 

• What is the responsibility of the elders of the church?
• What are the young men of the church supposed to do?
• How is pride an enemy to both the elders' and the young men's responsibilities?