Today's Devotional

April 18, 2002

Subject:  Lessons From The Chain

Proverbs 16:9 - "A man's heart deviseth his way but God directs his steps."   

I was out for a run where I work which is in a high business area.  As I approached my office building on my way back in, there was a point where I could either choose to run in the actual street with the traffic for about 10 yards if there were no cars coming up behind me, or I could choose to run through a parking lot where I would have to jump over two chains that were blocking it off.  Now the chains were really low, so of course that was the obvious answer.  As I slowly approached, I felt really comfortable about the option I had chosen.  I got there and made the leap to clear the first chain.  By now, as you've probably already guessed, I didn't clear it.  It was only about 8 inches off the ground.  This should have been no challenge to a 5 foot 6 inch guy who can grab the 10 foot rim on a basketball goal.  Of course, in order to prevent embarrassment, I used my cat-like reflexes to break my fall, landing on both hands squarely and dragging my shin across the chain.  I then bounded right up and kept running without looking back.  You know, as though nothing ever happened.  My shin was killing me, but I decided not to look down at it until I finished.  Incidentally, my right wrist was killing me too.   

This happened on a Monday.  Well the next Wednesday was another really nice day so I went out for another run along the same path.  The Marine challenge came out in me and I said in my mind, "I'm gonna jump that chain about 4 or 5 times to show it that it can't beat me."  So just as I'm about to approach that point on my run, I face a new dilemma.  A bicyclist has hit the sidewalk and now my options are to run in the traffic or off of the sidewalk in between a fire hydrant and some bushes.  Once again I choose to avoid traffic; a pretty good choice in my mind.  I pass the fire hydrant, but as I'm passing this bush, thorns reach out and rake across my right arm leaving a couple of thorns implanted in my arm and a scar.  Now I'm grabbing my arm as I approach the chains at the parking lot and I'm mad because I'm hurting from the bush, but then I see up ahead of me that someone has lowered the chains in the parking lot to the ground.  Okay, so what was my message in all of this?  God's gonna getcha.  If God wants to bring trial or hardship into your life, which we know all works together for our good (Romans 8:28), then you can choose whatever option (way) you believe is best, but He's still gonna bring the trial because He is directing our steps. 

Lessons I learned from the chain are:

(1)  Don't take sins that you've conquered for granted.  It's those things that we previously beat that can trip us up.

(2) God has to remind us every now and then of point (1).  Once He reminded me of that fact, it wasn't necessary to have me jump the chain again.

Lesson from the bush:

The path of least resistance may not always be so.  Even that path can have thorns that leave scars.

Carlen