Tag: mistakes

Posted in Christmas, Family, Grace, life, loving others, missions, travel, wisdom

Oops

Posted on by Dewayne Taylor

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.” Hebrews 2:1

I should have paid closer attention.  This past week our church took its annual trip to Atlanta to work at the Operation Christmas Child distribution center.  Samaritan’s Purse heads up this amazing ministry that encourages people to pack a shoebox with toys, toiletries, and the like.  The boxes are then collected and shipped around the world to kids everywhere…last year 10 million of them! To the kids it is the greatest gift ever.  But the best part is that each box contains the story of Jesus and how much He loves them.  Every child loves the gifts but many also hear about Jesus for the first time and love Him too.

So, we take a day and travel on our church bus from Southern Illinois down to Atlanta.  We work a full day at the processing center preparing the boxes to be shipped and then the next day we travel home.  It is a busy three days and frankly the day we work at the processing center is a long, but wonderful, day.  The travel days are easy thanks to our great bus driver Brent.  Brent is on staff at our church and He loves people, loves Jesus, and loves to drive!

Well, we left early, really early, Tuesday morning and travelled all day before arriving in Atlanta in the late afternoon.  After we checked into our hotel rooms we loaded back up on the bus and went to a mall that was close to the hotel to get supper.  We went our separate ways but several of us ended up at a Greek restaurant.  It was good.  We took our time enjoying the meal and soon it was time for us to leave.  My wife Judy was going to pay our bill and I told her I was going to go to the restroom.  Having not been there before I looked for the sign and headed in that direction.  It was down a small hallway.  I only saw one sign and it said men, so in I went.

No one else was in the restroom and in just a minute I was ready to leave.  When I opened the door, a lady from our team was just about to push the door open.  I looked at her and she looked at me…something wasn’t right.  My first thought was that she obviously was confused and was going into the wrong restroom.  But then I had a thought.  It was odd that the restroom didn’t have the usual equipment you find in a men’s restroom.  And then it hit me. Oh no!

Well, I blurted out to her, “Am I in the wrong restroom?” And she confirmed my worst nightmare…I was.  Fortunately, I knew her and fortunately no one else was in there, I began to I apologize all over myself.  Crazily, in my 66 years of life, this had happened two other times—both years ago.  Each time, I wanted to die.  This case was no different.  I swore her to secrecy but then realized this was too good of a story to pass by.  The big question is how in the world do you end up where you don’t belong?  That’s a great question.  In my case the signage just wasn’t clear, and I was tired, and I just wasn’t paying attention.  Put those three together and know that social disaster is right around the corner.

Maybe you have never gone in the wrong restroom, but perhaps you’ve headed the wrong way on a one way street. It’s frightening when you’re seeing headlights and you’re supposed to be seeing taillights. It is one thing when we accidentally go in the wrong direction, but too many times we find ourselves in the wrong place—by choice.  The wrong movie, the wrong relationship, the wrong side of the law, or more importantly, on the wrong side of God’s Word.  Truth be known it happens way too often.  And it usually happens when we get tired, or busy, or sloppy, in our faith.  In my case there really were no consequences besides my being incredibly embarrassed, but that is not always the case.  Too often our sloppiness ends up in broken lives, broken marriages, and broken hearts.

The Bible has a lot to say about wisdom and staying on the right path. It says, “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.”  If I had been paying careful attention, I would have noticed that the sign was intended for the other door…not the one I took.  If I hadn’t been sloppy, I could have passed on a very embarrassing moment. Well, they say that hindsight is 20/20.  So, what about it?  Are we willing to watch where we go and where we step?  I think you will find that it is just the wise thing to do.  And, by the way, when we do mess up, well, it’s good to know that His grace really is sufficient and to know that always, He’s got this. 

Posted in Family, life, Scripture, wisdom

Here Kitty, Kitty

Posted on by Dewayne Taylor

“Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him.” Proverbs 7:5

“Dewayne, we have a problem.” It was Judy and it was what greeted me as I was going out to the garage to get something I needed.  I think I know how it must have felt when the crew of Apollo 13 uttered those now famous words, “Houston…we have a problem.” I had started painting our upstairs bathroom. You need to know I am no Leonardo da Vinci and this was not going to be a Mona Lisa. Into that throes the news came.  “We” have a problem. 

I quickly explained to Judy that I didn’t have time for a problem.  My paint was drying and some of it was in the wrong place—like the floor.  She told me there was a cat trapped in her car.  Wait.  What?  Well, the night before she had told me she saw a cat go in our garage and I should check before I closed it up for the night.  About 9.30, I went out and did the “Here, Kitty, Kitty” thing, shined my flashlight around in the corners and such.  No cat. “Good.” I said.  Or not. 

So it turns out our homeless friend didn’t move on—it moved in.  The crazy part was that it took up residence in the engine compartment of her car.  Silly cat.  I was going to say, “stupid cat” but I thought you might think me harsh.  So anyway, I left the drying paint in the bathroom to attempt a rescue.  It was about then that I discovered why it is so expensive to work on Volkswagen cars.  You open the hood to only discover that every square inch is stuffed with something.  And somewhere in all of that was the cat.  Silly cat. 

A friend was there with Judy and all three of us looked and prodded, we called and cooed and nothing—just the occasional meow of the cat. Judy volunteered to look if I jacked up the car to see if we could see anything from underneath.  I did and she couldn’t.  It was time to call in the calvary.  I called my neighbor Jared who manages a local tire place.  Surely he would have an idea.  As we waited for him to come, we continued to prod and poke, coo and call.  In my sweetest voice I kept saying, “Hey silly kitty, come here silly kitty.”  I wanted to say stupid cat but I was trying to be Christian about this whole deal. 

Then it happened.  The cat, who turned out to be the cutest kitten south of Chicago, wiggled out of its tight spot and ran to the corner of the garage.  So I moved from poking and prodding under the hood to poking and prodding in the corner filled with stuff we didn’t need.  Cute or not this kitten was about to mash my button. Not to bore you with details but four grown adults spent the next ten minutes chasing this cute little silly kitten from one corner of the garage to the other.  From behind the washer and dryer to the corner of no return, we played hide and seek. Finally, the cute little kitten saw the light of day, ran through our friends hands and legs and out the door.  Game. Set. Match. 

The cute little silly kitten was on the run and that was all that mattered.  Jared went back to work, the ladies went on with life and I went upstairs to scape dried paint off the floor. I know I heard this kitten laughing from across the street.  So what is up with all this?   Surely the kitten knew better.  Surely he or she knew the danger of living under the hood of a car—but probably not.  To the cute little kitten it was just a place to hide. 

You see the kitten wasn’t silly, the kitten wasn’t stupid (well, not real stupid anyway). The kitten just lacked experience.  It was naive. It hadn’t lived long enough to understand the dangers of garage living.  And do you know what?  That is true of a lot of us. Solomon, the wisest guy to ever live, wrote in Proverbs, “I saw among the inexperienced, I noticed among the youths, a young man lacking sense.”  And the crazy part it was nothing to do with age.  We have all made some crazy decisions at one time or another. Too often we just throw common sense to the wind and well, we end up with a train wreck. 

God is in the train wreck avoidance business.  That’s why He led the half-brother of Jesus to write in James 1:5, “Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him.” If we would do that one simple thing we could avoid a lot of painful situations.  Just stop for a moment, ask God if this is the wise thing to do, and wait for an answer.  By the way, silence might be an answer, so don’t miss it. 

Well, I hope our cute little kitten found a new place to live and hopefully it isn’t in someone’s engine compartment.  And I hope we will learn to trust a wise, loving Father to give us the wisdom we need to live better lives with fewer regrets and better consequences.  You know He loves you, don’t you?  He wants you to come to Him and rest in the safety of His arms.  He wants you to know He has this.  And He does.