Category Archives: Obedience

Damage Control

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Last weekend a bunch of us drove from our home in southwest Michigan to the Chicago area for a wedding. As we approached the city on the Dan Ryan Expressway, a disturbing sign caught my eye:

892 TRAFFIC DEATHS THIS YEAR      DRIVE NOW     TEXT LATER

Traffic deathsSurely all 892 weren’t killed as a result of texting, but some probably were. I know what it feels like to stray from my lane while texting and have done it just enough to say, “No more.” One second too many could exact a terrible price.

The other day Birgitta showed me an iPhone video taken through the front windshield of a squad car. An SUV in front of the policeman began drifting left. As it hit the shoulder, the driver must have looked up, recognized his error, and sharply overcompensated to the right.

He cut across several lanes and hit the side of a truck on the far right, bounced left across those same lanes and into oncoming traffic, and was hit head-on by a fast-moving 18-wheeler. The SUV and anyone inside were disintegrated on impact in an accident that took 5 seconds.

All of us are tempted to say, “I’ll just glance for a second.”

I wonder if similar life-devastation can happen when we look away from the Lord for “just a second.” The problem with texting while driving and also with taking our eyes off God probably isn’t as much about the quick look away as the getting stuck on what we’re looking at. Two seconds. Maybe three or four.

Whatever it is, it grabs our attention ever-so-slightly longer than the one second we promised ourselves. Suddenly we’re “stuck” and catastrophe occurs. It wouldn’t have happened at all except that whatever we were glancing at was, for those seconds, worth it to us.

The most devastating part of the whole thing is that there are no do-overs. If our quick peek turns into a longer one, it’s willful, risky, and a foolish gamble on our part. And if permanent damage gets done, whether while driving and texting, or in other areas of life when we let ourselves dwell on something we shouldn’t, back-peddling isn’t possible.

In hindsight, that just-a-second peek is virtually never worth it, because it doesn’t take much of a look to find us quickly invested in what we’re seeing. And when that happens, it gets more and more difficult to look back at God. As a matter of fact, it might be quite a while before we can pull our attention from what first distracted us to turn back toward him.

So hopefully, if we don’t text and drive, the odds are good we won’t be one of those numbers on Chicago’s expressway sign. Better than that, though, is not to take our eyes off God, not even for a second. If we focus exclusively on him, he’ll save us from many an accident.

“[Lord], turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in Your ways.” (Psalm 119:37)

Exactly Right

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Once in a while Emerald comes upstairs to my room for a bit of play time, so I cleared out a bottom drawer and loaded it with toys she gets to play with only when she’s “visiting” me.

A drawer for EmeraldAlthough she loves the dozen or so items in the drawer, it isn’t long before she’s looking up at whatever I’m doing (with the hair dryer, a pen and paper, the computer), wanting to play with those instead. I could let her have her way, but I don’t, since she’d probably ruin those things.

When I tell her “no”, she gets frustrated and sometimes objects loudly. Of course she doesn’t understand, but I’m confident my reasoning is better than hers. So I try to re-interest her in “her” drawer, hoping she’ll be satisfied with toys appropriate to her age and abilities.

Maybe it’s oversimplification, but I think God hopes for something similar in his dealings with us. Though he showers daily blessings on all of us, they’re not the same for everyone. When I first set up Emerald’s drawer, I put some thought into which items I would include and chose only what I knew she’d love: books, stuffed animals, keys, costume jewelry.

The Lord knows (much better than we do) what will satisfy us. He chooses flawlessly and gives these gifts to us, then waits for a response of gratitude. But often we turn from those things and want what we can’t have, things he knows we aren’t capable of handling well. And it isn’t just material things.

We get frustrated when we can’t have certain talents or physical characteristics or opportunities. We see others who’ve been given these things and judge them to have better blessings than we do. Worse than that, we get upset if we can’t control our lives, our futures, in a way that belongs only to God. Then when we express annoyance with what he’s “put in our drawer,” we become a disappointment to him.

The perfect choicesAs Emerald plays downstairs with other toys, I watch her to see if something new or different might be a nice addition to her upstairs drawer, because it’s satisfying to see her play happily with the toys I’ve put in there. And maybe God finds the same deep satisfaction if he sees us enjoying the specific blessings he’s chosen for us. But if we’re always wanting something more or something different, we become a disappoint to him.

Although 13 month old Emerald has no understanding of disappointing me, I’m old enough to know better than to be greedy for more, or ungrateful for what I’ve already been given. And a good place to start breaking myself of such childish behavior is to thank him liberally for everything that he’s already put “into my drawer.”

“Let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.” (1 Corinthians 7:17)

Faking it.

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Nate and I never planned to have 7 kids. When we did, it was fine by us, but with children spread over 17 years, our large family brought a few surprises. One was that we would be dominated by school schedules for 31 years (not counting college).

For most of those years, I had no trouble getting up in the morning, since babies and toddlers make good alarm clocks. But when the babies quit coming, getting up by 5:50 AM became a problem. So I began playing a trick on myself.

TimingI hated the thought of such an early start each day, so I set my bedside clock 11 minutes ahead. When the alarm sounded, the first thing I saw was 6:01, which was world’s better that 5:50. Enlisting those digital clock numbers in my ruse seemed to solve my wake-up problem. But it also made me ask what other self-deceptions I had going for me.

All of us can talk ourselves into believing lies of our own making: “It’s such a little thing,” we say. “How much could it matter? It’s just a few… a few dollars… a few meetings… a few exaggerations… a few minutes. No one really cares.”

A just weightThe idea of fudging just a little was well depicted on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, October 3, 1936. An elderly lady paying for a chicken by its weight is pressing up on the scale from beneath, while the proprietor is pressing down from above. A little cheating wouldn’t matter. What’s a few ounces? But both had deceived themselves into thinking deceiving someone else was ok.

I confess I’ve struggled with “full disclosure” to myself on countless occasions. That’s because not telling the truth inside my head is sometimes easier and often works well in the short run. For example, I might think, “I’m going to start eating healthy any day now, but not yet. Eating what I want helps me cope with stress.” But is that the truth?

Most of the world has heard the statement, “The truth will set you free.” But as always, this promise is part of an “if – then”. Scripture says if we “hold to the teachings of Christ” (John 8:31-32), then his truth will set us free. Ultimately, truth is always linked to the Lord.

So, what is Jesus Christ’s teaching about self-deception? He says that if we consistently tell “little white lies” to ourselves, we’re at risk for three problems:

  1. small lies morph into bigger ones.
  2. deceiving ourselves morphs into deceiving others.
  3. regular lying morphs into trouble telling the truth.

As always, if we correct ourselves at the root of the problem (self-trickery), other more serious symptoms will fall into line. And eventually even our clocks can be set free to tell the truth.

“They all fool and defraud each other; no one tells the truth. With practiced tongues they tell lies…. They pile lie upon lie and utterly refuse to acknowledge me,” says the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:5-6)