Watch Where You're Going

Watch Where You're Going
Bev Smith
June 30, 2010

Tim had changed the oil in our van and happened to leave the containers of oil that he had drained out of the van sitting in the middle of the garage floor. One of our kids had driven to work and upon finishing the shift that they were scheduled to work, drove home. It was an exciting time for them. This happened to be day 2 on a new job, a new job that meant some income and independence. It was a good day!

What this child of ours didn't realize was that the oil that had been drained from the van remained in the middle of the garage floor neatly in containers. The young driver made it home safely from work and pulled into the garage to park the car, pulling forward slowly, carefully maneuvering the car to be clear of the garage wall and anything that was stored in the garage. What the teen didn't see was the oil and drove squarely over one of the plastic gallon jugs, exploding the container and sending oil all over the garage. Oil went everywhere - all over the extra freezer that we have stored in our garage, all over the steps, all over the van that was parked in the garage, all over the wall, all over the garage floor! There was nasty, brownish-black, slick, slimy motor oil everywhere! It was an awful mess! The clean-up was time consuming and tedious.  It took far longer to clean the mess up than it did to make it.

Is there a spiritual application, you ask? As a matter of fact, there are three that I've come up with and probably many more that you can come up with.

We have to watch where we're going. We must always keep our eyes on the goal. If we don't watch where we are going, our lives can become a spiritual mess.

Don't be a stumbling block to others. We must live our life in such a way that we would never be the reason or the source of someone doing wrong. Had the oil been put away, the mess never would have happened.

We can be careless and make wrong spiritual decisions in a matter of a split second. It doesn't take long at all but those who love us and care about us can suffer for a very long time as a result of our decisions...even a lifetime. We must NEVER believe that our actions affect only us.