Every time my dog, Dixie, eats anything but a very specific type of dog food (and just a few very specific snacks) she gets sick. It’s inevitable. I’ve had many different dogs throughout my life but I have never had a dog with such a sensitive stomach. It’s so frustrating. She loves to eat…is obsessed even (as is typical for most Labrador Retrievers). And so before we can stop her, she scarfs down food left on plates on the kids’ table or scraps that fall to the floor from the high chair.
Last night Dixie ran to our basement apartment where my husband’s sister and family have been staying for a few days. Unbeknownst to us, she ate the dog food that was in a bowl on the floor for their dog. My sister-in-law mentioned this and my heart sank. When, in answer to my question, she assured me that it wasn’t the Purina brand of dog food I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe she wouldn’t get sick. (Dixie seems to get especially sick with any food labeled Purina for some reason. My other dog lived a good long and healthy life eating Purina so no knocks on Purina. )
But, no, this morning I was rudely awakened by… well, you can only imagine. She got through the whole night but somehow couldn’t wait that extra few minutes for one of us to let her out. Ugh.
She made a choice to eat food that she shouldn’t have and, as always, she bore the consequences. And so did we. The consequences are never just hers alone.
But she loves, loves, loves to eat and so if food is available she will take it without care for the consequences.
Dixie is a dog. Of course, she has no process of logic or ability to think through what she is doing. She just does it.
But we humans–who do have this ability and can think logically– too often do this same thing, don’t we?
I ran into a friend recently who works for a charity organization. One thing she said has stuck with me: The people that need help are mostly in their situations because of their own bad choices. They are reaping the consequences of wrong choices.
And so are we all at some level.
Some kind of instant gratification comes from our choice to eat too much, yell at our spouse or kids, fill our minds with the things God hates, go places we know we shouldn’t go, buy that thing on credit that we can’t afford, or letting our kids spend hours and hours on tablets so they don’t bother us.
The problem is we’ve talked ourselves into the belief that there are no consequences for these choices. But that’s just not true.
An unkind word to our spouse or yelling at our children weakens our relationship; choosing to overeat on a regular basis yields an unhealthy life; filling our minds with the things God hates hardens our consciences and increases our love for the world that God says we are to turn from; lazily handing our kids a tablet instead of interacting with them will yield kids who are hampered relationally; and on and on this list goes. And these consequences often spill out on to others, making them pay for our bad choices.
Thankfully, God, in His awesome grace and abundant mercy, graciously keeps us from experiencing many of the potential consequences of our daily sinful choices. And so we don’t always experience the consequences we fully deserve. His faithfulness, despite our failures, is…well, it’s hard to express our gratitude for this, isn’t it?
But consequences are something we should always think about when we are making any choice, whether it be something that takes us weeks to deliberate (a new home or a career change) or it’s small (what we will watch tonight or how we will respond when someone in our family annoys us).
What is the potential consequence of my choice?
If you are like me, you are just not thinking about this question when faced with the daily choice of what to put in your mouth OR when you are feeling frustrated by someone and the words just come pouring out (or if you are the quiet type, the ungenerous and unkind thoughts fill your mind) OR when you feel exhausted and you just want to veg in front of the TV.
But as we mature in Christ, this should become something we ponder more and more. Particularly the aspect of how our choice will please God. Will my choice strengthen or weaken my relationship with my heavenly Father?
So much is clarified when we ask this particular question because I know that God hates when I treat my family unkindly or when I watch, read, or listen to something filled with the things He hates (and this is NOT just the things that are obvious but includes themes and ideology that are in direct opposition to scripture.)
As we head into a new year, I want to be more cognizant of my sinful choices and intentional about confessing them and asking God to help me. It is so very easy to fall into a status quo Christian life. This life is easy and demands nothing from us. But this isn’t really the Christian life that is in the Bible, where we are told to examine ourselves (2 Corinthians 13:5) and to prove or test all things (I Thessalonians 5:21).
This is not easy. Especially in a Christian culture that does not teach this. But, as Christians who want to live a life to please God, we must be intentional about these things. For they won’t just happen.
May we grow together in faith in 2024. Thanks for reading and being here for another year at Growing4Life!
AMEN!