"Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Shocking Lessons from God

        God may teach us by shocking us if we don't pay attention to earlier warnings. I don't know if I have mentioned this incident in the past (after over 2,000 posts, it's no longer easy to remember). I used to be somewhat obsessive about collecting music recordings, vinyl long-playing records and later, compact discs. In the old days, there were no online stores, so the only way was to actually visit the stores to find any interesting releases. I knew in the back of my mind that I was spending too much time doing this, but it's easy to go on anyhow. One day when I was driving home right after spending an excessive amount of time at Tower Records (which had folded six years ago), a bird flew out of a row of trees along the freeway and collided with the car's windshield. The impact was so great that it sounded like an explosion and the whole windshield, being tempered, broke into myriad small pieces covering my entire upper body. I really thanked the Lord that nothing went into my eyes. This was a lesson loud and clear to show me that I was wrong in being so obsessed about acquiring recordings.
        The other hobby of mine was collecting postcards of airplanes, ships, trains, and cars. To every new city I traveled to, I headed for the postcard stands first. It was exactly when I was doing this that my unwatched camera bags containing all the equipment and rolls and rolls of film shot were stolen. This shock stopped my collecting folly cold.
        Early this morning I had a bad dream. In it I put my camera bag on the rear seat of my parked car on the street of a busy city and left to go somewhere. After walking quite a while, I remembered that I forgot to lock the car and got panicky. So I started rushing back to the car, but lost my way and just didn't know where the car was parked. I was so alarmed and woke up. Is there a lesson I could learn here? Yes, the Lord showed me how attaching to anything in this world can cause great pain and it's just not worth it. Thank God for the shocks.

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