While rooting around in our kitchen pantry recently, I accidentally knocked an aerosol can of non-stick spray stuff onto the floor. The lid and nozzle broke off the can and a geyser of slimy goo spewed out, covering my face and everything else within range of that twirling, demon-possessed can.
My husband witnessed the whole fiasco and offered this advice: “You should be more careful.”
I glared at him through my gunked-up glasses and said, “Ya think?”
Yea, he was right. I should have been more careful, but I was simply trying to find a box of pasta, for Pete’s sake, not storming the beaches of Normandy or disabling a nuclear bomb. Silly me – I felt like our pantry was a safe place.
What Joe said was true, but at that moment, drenched as I was in non-stick spray, I didn’t want to hear it.
Lest I’m too hard on my hubby, I confess that I, too, have also occasionally been guilty of stating the obvious to someone who is suffering the consequences of their folly. It’s a bit like shooting fish in a barrel – too easy to be sporting — and when you’re the fish, it’s annoying.
By the time Joe said, “Be more careful,” it was too late to be careful; all I could be was aggravated and very, well, non-sticky (the spray is aptly named).
Life’s “should haves” and “could haves” are hard enough to cope with; insult is added to injury when we pile on and state the obvious after the stupid deed is done.
It’s a whole lot more effective to dispense wisdom and warnings BEFORE it’s too late, which is what God does.
While the Bible records some “I-told-you-so” moments between God and wayward souls, we mustn’t overlook the loving warnings that preceded those chastisements, all the times God revealed the better path and said, “Go this way… avoid this mistake.”
As He says in Deuteronomy 30:19, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live …”
And God doesn’t make any bones about what will happen if we veer off His path: “The way of transgressors is hard.” (Proverbs 13:15)
How hard? The Bible includes sobering accounts of folks who ignored God’s wisdom and warnings. Adam and Eve disobeyed and got evicted from paradise; Jonah ran from God and became fish food; the children of Israel whined, rebelled, and spent several unnecessary decades wandering in the wilderness; evil Queen Jezebel, the Darth Vader of her day, defied God and ended up doing a swan dive from a high window; Ananias and Sapphira tried to con God and ZAP! it was curtains for the greedy couple.
All these folks knew better. God stated the obvious to them BEFORE they sinned, and the heart behind His commandments was this: “I love you so much, but remember: I am God and You are not.”
I don’t think God takes any pleasure in coming to us after we’ve created a big, sinful mess to tell us “you shoulda, you coulda.” He wants us to hear Him before it’s too late.
God doesn’t enjoy shooting fish in a barrel; in fact, His desire is to keep us as far from that barrel as possible. So He lovingly tells us, “Obey Me, and I will be your God and you will be My people. Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you.” (Jeremiah 7:23b)
Hear that? God wants it to go well with us.
I want it to go well with me, too. How about you?