I once worked w/ a guy who told me of a funny experience he’d had over the previous weekend.     It seems that my friend, a young teen named Don, was riding his bike around his family’s property, pistol in hand, shooting rats around the outside of the house.    At one point, the little obnoxious dog owned by the lady who lived next door started to chase Don while he was riding around, jumping up at him, attempting to bite him on the heels.

Well, Don had had enough, so he took a couple shots near the dog, w/ his pistol, in order to try to scare the dog off.  But after 2 or 3 shots, his aim was too true, and one of those bullets hit the dog, killing him.     Don freaked.  He figured that the neighbor lady, when she found out what he did, would kill him.  So he got off the bike, picked up the dead dog, threw it in some nearby bushes, then started to ride back over to his family’s house.  But, he started to feel guilty about what had happened, and he decided to go back over to the lady’s house, fess up to accidentally killing her dog, & apologize to her.

Yet as he got off his bike & started walking up her front porch steps, he began to chicken out.  He figured that, instead of accepting his apology, the woman would end up having his head on a platter.  So he turned around, started back down the steps, got on his bike, & started to ride away.

But his conscience got the best of him, and he decided he really did need to go see this lady & apologize, face to face.  He did get back as far as the bottom of her front porch steps again, but then thought to himself, “If I don’t confess to her, she’ll never know what happened to the dog.  She’ll think it ran off.”  So he started to leave to go back home once more.

However, once again, his conscience got the best of him, and he decided he HAD to go confess & apologize.  So he turned his bike around, got to the bottom of the woman’s front porch steps, got off his bike, walked up the steps & knocked on the door.

Well, the lady came to the door & greeted Don, and he explained to her the heart-breaking story of how he came to accidentally kill her dog.  After his story, he stood there, expecting her to body-slam him, in anger, to the porch floor and pound him to pieces for having killed her dog.  He said she got this weird look on her face, raised her hands above her head, & started to jump up & down on the porch.  He thought to himself, “Uh, oh.  Here it comes…”

But, he said, the woman burst out laughing, and then right away said to him, “Thank you!  Thank you for killing that STUPID dog!”  Don said he stuttered & said to her, “Uh, what?”  She said, “Thank you for killing that dumb dog.”  Then, she continued to explain: “That dog never really belonged to me – it was just a stray that kept hanging around my house, and it was always creating problems for me – getting into my trash, making messes on my yard & porch, and barking at all hours of the night.  I was trying to think of a way to get rid of it, but I didn’t have the heart to kill it myself, so you solved the problem for me.  Thank you!”  Don then said to me, “I thought to myself, ‘Wow, that turned out pretty well.'”

The Bible says in Luke 15:8-10, “Suppose a woman has 10 silver coins, & loses one of them.  Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house & search carefully until she finds it?  And when she finds it, she calls her friends & neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me – I’ve found my lost coin.’  In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.'”

Now, let’s be clear, here.  The Bible isn’t saying here that God is happy about it when we sin, not at all.  In fact, when we DO sin, it grieves Him.  But when we fall under conviction for our sin, & we go to Him in prayer, honestly & sincerely repenting for it, that truly pleases Him, and He & the angels rejoice.

 

 

 

 

“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”  We’ve all heard that phrase a million times in our life, and we’ve used it ourselves when talking to others many times.  But how often do we really consider the power of that advice?     I have had many experiences throughout my life that have taught me that lesson, again & again.

One of those instances involves the fact that, up until the age of 24, I had never broken a bone.  I had had plenty of opportunities to do that, having survived a couple of car wrecks and having had other significant “thrills & spills.”  But if finally succeeded in breaking one of my bones, on September 1, 1986.

It’s a long & stupid story, so I won’t bore you w/ the unneeded details, but the Reader’s Digest Version.  During the course of that evening, I managed to fall – a distance of around 6-7 feet.  Landing on my back, I actually crushed one of my vertebrae.  It’s called a “Burst Fracture,” where the bone involved literally explodes into incredibly small pieces.  Yes, where for the first 24 1/2 years of my life, I had been able to almost brag about never having had a broken bone, this would no longer be the case.

Very fortunately, even though the injury was as serious as it was, and even though I had been picked up & moved, twice, by people who had no idea what they were doing, I was not paralyzed.  But nevertheless, I had been put in my place, in a sense.  I found out the hard way that I wasn’t invincible after all.

I mentioned the phrase, “Don’t count your chickens…” earlier.  Well, a number of years ago, I discovered the Biblical version to that piece of advice.  It comes from 1 Kings 20:11, and it’s there the Bible says, “He who puts on his battle armor shouldn’t boast like the one who takes his battle armor off.”  Wow.  Yea, pretty much says it all, don’t you think

I like to say to people that I believe that there are a couple of main, overall messages that the Bible contains for people.  1) There is a Creator-God who’s in charge of the world and who has a specific plan for each of our lives, and who desires for us to love him; 2) We are to love each other; and 3) You never know, in life, just exactly how your life will unfold in front of you day by day.  There’s absolutely no telling in advance what kind of experiences life will hand us, and the Bible is loaded with verses & passages that deal with that very truth.

In connection with that last point, there’s the story of a guy who, at the age of 19, decided that he was going to live to be 101.  Knowing that he was going to have to tailor his behavior in order to ensure, as much as possible, that he’d reach that goal, he decided he was going to have to do a number of things.

First of all, he was going to end up living in a city without a lot of pollution, so that his likelihood of contracting some pollution-related disease would be nil, and a city without a lot of crime, so he wouldn’t be likely to be killed by a random act of violence.  He’d plan to work in a low-hazard-risk job, so that he wouldn’t likely become one of those statistics on work-place deaths.  He’d have to start exercising, so he figured he’d go jogging daily, and finally – he was going to have to change his eating habits, including shunning eating pizza for the rest of his life, since pizza is full of fat & cholesterol.

Well, one day, 12 years later (at the ripe old age of 31, 70 years short of his goal of making it to 101), he finds himself at the end of this particular day.  He’s just come home from his low-hazard risk job.  But before going home to a dinner of Tofu & brussell sprouts, he’s taking his routine jog through the safe, city streets in which he lives, free of pollution & crime.  As he approaches the next intersection, he has the green light to cross the street on foot, but just as he’s about 1/2-way across the street, a car comes speeding from the right side into the intersection, hitting him & killing him instantly.

The truely ironic thing about this fatal accident was that the young man who was driving the car that hit & killed the man who’s the focus of this story was in the process of delivering a Pizza to a neighborhood address.  So even though the first man had successfully avoided eating pizza for 12 years, in order to help extend his life to live to be 101…pizza wound up cutting the guy’s life short & killing him anyway.

The Bible says in Proverbs 16:1, “We might make our plans, but God has the last word.”  And in a similar manner 11 chapters later, Proverbs 27:1 warns, “Don’t brag about tomorrow, because you don’t know what will happen between now & then.”

I think you’ll agree with me that although it is good to dream dreams & make plans, when it comes to being able see into the future, you just never know…