the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Daily Devotionals
Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life
Just this past evening I followed a woman with a car full of people and a rather dubious bumper sticker on her rear bumper. "If you think Education is Expensive - Try Ignorance!!!" I then watched her as she made her way across Long Lick Road. Long Lick Road (State Route 32) is a meandering highway that is rife with hills and dips. Blind rises abound and passing zones are all but nonexistent.
As I followed the woman I began to realize that she was taking her own bumper sticker to heart; she was trying ignorance. The very root of the word ignorance is the concept of struggling to ignore. As I watched, the lady in front of me approached rise after rise right in the middle of the road. She had struggled to ignore the most important rule of the road when driving a country highway; don't take your half out of the middle.
Miraculously (I don't use that word loosely or very often - it fits here very well) nothing was coming. The number of times I have driven that road and had just oodles of traffic coming toward me (a large portion of which have had two wheels sitting in my lane...I must start checking for that bumper sticker on them) and, yet, not one vehicle ever met us. I was very grateful as well as surprised.
That was when it struck me what I had done. I am one of these who doesn't always adhere to the rule of one car length for each ten miles an hour of speed. Yet, there I was, following a woman doing fifty miles an hour from ten car lengths behind. Out of fear I was keeping my distance. How often do we follow people too closely? How often are we right on their bumper and what happens to them happens to us? Not on the highway, but in life.
The lives of those who choose to ignore the truth of Christ are lethal to us. Still we follow them far too often and far too closely. "If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth." Colossians 3:1, 2 We must embrace, not ignore, the things that are above. We must ignore, not embrace, those who have continually demonstrated their choice to ignore the things above.
'Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life' Copyright 2010 © Tom Kelley. 'Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life' articles may be reproduced in whole under the following provisions: 1) A proper credit must be given to the author at the end of each story, along with their complete bio and a link to https://www.studylight.org/ 2) 'Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life' content may not be arranged or "mirrored" as a competitive online service.
