Consider Your Ways

 

I went to the dermatologist last week and they inspected my skin for cancerous cells.  Not a fun thing to do.  But I used the opportunity to ask the nurse practitioner about the pimples on my face.  It seems that my Santa beard is causing the breakouts.  I told her that I used shampoo on my scalp and beard, and he said suggested a shampoo with Tea Tree oil in it.  I use an inexpensive strawberry shampoo from Walmart because oily shampoo slicks my hair down onto my head.  So, I got some Tea Tree oil and added it to my Walmart strawberry shampoo.  But the smell of my new shampoo concoction was terrible!  Now I have an entire bottle of stinky, Strawberry/Tea Tree oil shampoo.  It seemed to be a good idea at the time.  Hey, have you ever had a “good idea” that didn’t turn out the way you expected it to?  Maybe you hadn’t quite thought it all the way through?  Some things in life are like that.  Some things start out small but grow over time until you find yourself into a full-blown situation that you never planned on being in.  Without planning ahead, life happens, and years go by.  Relationships grow stale.  Children learn bad habits that became character flaws.  We turn around a couple of times and we are old.  Haggai lived in the 6^th century BC and warned the nation of Israel.  He admonished them in Haggai 1:5&6, “Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways.”  Haggai spoke of a life without purpose; a life that just happened.  But his words are a good reminder for us too.  Hey, consider your ways.