Light or Noise?

 

I get up early MWF to take my dear wife to dialysis, and I go out to warm up the car about 4:45 am.  Yikes!  I try to be considerate of the neighbors … although they are not that considerate of me.  Next door to me are two white Pyrenees that bark constantly.  When their owner leaves them out all night (so she can get a good night’s sleep) I have to keep a noisy box fan running in my bedroom to drown out their barking.  But, back to the story of my consideration (and my modesty.  Ha, ha!).  Friday morning, I didn’t turn on the back porch light so that the neighbors could continue to sleep.  And I negotiated the ramp and car door in the dark pushing my wife in her wheelchair (she wasn’t too confident with me pushing her around in the dark).  But as I was loading her wheelchair into the back of our car, a tickle in my throat started a coughing spell.  The two white Pyrenees responded with barking, which triggered the neighbor’s collie up the hill, which alerted the other neighbor’s pit bull two houses over.  My good intentions had failed.  As I got into the car with the dog chorus all around, I asked my wife, “Which is worse?  The light or the noise?”  We decided that it was the noise.  So, Monday, I’ll turn on the light and let my neighbors and their dogs ease into our morning movements.  Hey, no good deed goes unpunished.  Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 1:9, “… there is no new thing under the sun.”  People get up early and dogs bark.  The neighbors just need to deal with it.

A Fake

 

I had many odd jobs while in college.  Odd jobs actually means a job for a short period of time, but some of my odd jobs were truly “odd”.  Loveman’s department store in Chattanooga had a “British Days Sale” featuring their London Fog clothing line.  I was hired for two weeks to be a Grenadier guard, like the real guards at Buckingham palace.  I had the tall hat and uniform, but a fake rifle.  Hey, I wouldn’t trust me with a real gun either.  Ha, ha!  There were two of us and we stood across the aisle-way from each other staring straight ahead.  We looked the part and most customers didn’t think that we were real until they saw us blink an eye.  If anyone got too close, we snapped to attention with the ”fake” gun raised in front of us.  I’m not sure if that sort of intimidation would work today.  Hey, are there “fake” areas of your spiritual life today?  Others see one thing, but inside, you really know that you are a fake?  Jesus said in Matthew 7:15,16,20, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”  If I had tried to use my gun, everyone, including me, would have known that it was fake.  Hey, do you have a fake Christian life?!  Today would be a good day for you to come clean with the good Lord.  After all, He already knows.

A Bad Example

 

My dad told me years ago, “Everyone is good for something.  But some people just serve as a bad example.”  Solomon said in Proverbs 24:30, “I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction.”  Hey, are you a good example to others?  Or are you an example of what not to be?  Maybe it’s time to make a change.  Think about it.