One day my granddaughter brought a Smoothie, a “skinny” Smoothie, to me, it was orange vanilla, my favorite. I took the Smoothie from her beautiful young hands and took a long drink through the straw which she had already placed in the lid, how could I not? As it hit my stomach or where ever the spot is that it has to touch to do its dirty deed, that awful, blinding pain hit me in the head over my right eye! I tried all the tricks I have read about how to make it stop, I panted like I was in labor, I stuck my tongue to the roof of my mouth, I breathed a great lung full of warm air, nothing worked until it had finished its course leaving me holding my head between the palms of my hands with eyes watering to the point my non-water-proof mascara was running into my burning eyes! I knew I should have been careful and sipped it slowly, I’ve had brain freezes in the past, why did I throw caution to the wind and draw in that long sip of freezing liquid? Because orange vanilla is my favorite flavor! Was the taste worth the pain in the brain? As good as it was I would have to say no.
Why do we do anything that we do when we know it is going to cause us trouble?
Because we are not thinking about the consequences our actions will cause, we are only looking at the pleasure of the taste.
Before you judge yourself too harshly look around at all the famous people that had so much to lose by acting out their foolish desires and yet they went for it. It isn’t limited to us plebeians that no one really cares about, we do things and it doesn’t get published in the National Enquirer, it doesn’t make it less wrong for us, it’s just that fewer people care what we do, but what about someone that could lose a huge ministry, or have it cost an election to a coveted government post?
You can always go to the Bible for examples of people that would have made the Enquirer headlines; let’s start with Adam and Eve, I can see it all now, “First couple eat fruit from forbidden tree and are found NAKED and hiding in the trees!” That would make me stop in the grocery line to read and I might even pick it up and buy it to see what had caused them to do something so obviously stupid! Look at one of the First Family brothers, no it wasn’t Billy Carter who was known for his outlandish public behavior; he once urinated on an airport runway in full view of the press and dignitaries, it was Cain, the son of the naked and banished couple! He let his anger get the best of him and spilled the first human blood and God spoke saying “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground!” We can read of so many mistakes, think of Moses the man chosen by God to lead the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land, “Moses, leader of Jews, found guilty of the murder of an Egyptian soldier”.We could go on with this and name Aachen who stole a wedge of gold against the orders of Joshua causing the death of his whole family; Samson who told his God given secret leading to his blindness and being treated like an animal and put in the arena so they could make fun of him.
When my grandson was about eight we were talking about the story of Samson, his mom asked him “Gabe why did Samson let Delilah cut his hair?”He had the answer right away, “Because he needed a haircut!”Simple and to the point, maybe Gabe was right, maybe the handsome and proud young Judge of Israel had to go through the terror of losing his power and his sight to help him see where his help really came from, from God.
We could go on talking about this but I don’t want to bore you with detail, let’s just figure this out together, they all sinned and so have you and I, that being the case shall we give them and each other the benefit of the doubt and say that perhaps we had a brain freeze and just weren’t thinking straight?
Let’s show each other the scripture Hebrews 4:16 “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
So what is the conclusion of this matter?
Don’t judge someone when you see their face contorted in the pain of a brain freeze, you might be the next one that takes a long, cold swallow of the particular sin that freezes yours!
Harolene.com 