WACKY WEDNESDAY WISDOM: It Only Takes a Spark

     No sooner had my hand begun to reach before I knew I'd made a mistake. Yet my hand continued reaching anyway. Funny how that works. Your mind knows it's about to do something stupid yet your renegade body insists on pressing forward.
    That's why I think kind and decent folks are forced to invent various sorts of phrases designed to impart wisdom to those of us dummies who insist on committing acts of utter stupidity on a semi-regular basis. I shall now share of few of my favorite:

"Look before you leap."
"Think before you act."
"Understand what reaction will follow your action."
"Don't do something permanently stupid because you are temporarily upset."

And my mostest favorite (from the old commercial that encouraged us to wear seat belts- featuring mangled crash test dummies in staged and orchestrated crashes):
"You could learn a lot from a dummy."

Okay, and now my even more mostest favorite:
"Think once before you act, twice before you speak, and three times before you post on Facebook."

     I recall an incident that happened during my junior year of high school in which I learned an important lesson about touching spark plugs on lawn mowers. The lesson was this: Don't touch spark plugs on lawn mowers. Especially when lawn mowers are running.
     It so happened that on the fateful day in question, one of my high school baseball teammates pulled up into my driveway while I was dutifully mowing the grass on our family riding mower. He was waving one of our newly arrived team undershirts and indicating that I should come over and retrieve it from him. Our lawn mower had some sort of weird hangup where it wouldn't shut off on its own- you had to unhook the spark plug to get it to stop.
    I had performed the procedure successfully before, but on that day, my exuberance led me to make the regrettable mistake of touching the spark plug and some sort of wire at the same time, the result of which was a buzz to my hand that felt similar to being simultaneously stung by seven Japanese hornets, Cupid's arrow, and three hypodermic needles all at once.
     For some reason, my friend howled with laughter as he witnessed my body flinging itself into the air in reaction to the shock. As I descended to earth, I realized I was still alive and quickly moved to claim my hard earned undershirt. We shared a laugh and then he left. I stood there feeling alternatively stupid and a whole lot wiser both at the same time.
     Flash forward nearly forty years or so. A week or two back I was doing some mowing in the yard and noticed that my push mower was gasping for air at times and losing power along the way. I took a look toward the engine and noticed a spark plug wire thingamajig had come loose from its designated partner spark plug . The area of my brain where history is recorded and which also secretes good judgment knew better but was unable to inform my insubordinate hand soon enough to prevent it from reaching for the loose wire to secure it back to the spark plug.
      A moment later, as my skyrocketing 56-year-old body shot upwards toward infinity and beyond, I vividly recalled the incident from 1981. Upon finally landing back on planet Earth, I vowed then and there that a third strike would never occur. And back to work mowing the grass I went.
     They say those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But sometimes, even if we've learned from history, we still manage to repeat it. We make the same mistakes over and over again. We don't intend to, but we do.
     I'm glad God doesn't send us to the bench and give up on us after Strike One, Strike Two, or even Strike three. "You're still in the game," He says, "And I still believe in you." Peter made the same mistake three times straight by denying he knew Jesus but was reinstated by the risen Christ himself soon afterward. Jesus said in Matthew 18:22 when asked about forgiveness- "I tell you not seven times, but seventy-seven times". Some versions say "seventy times seven times": but the meaning is clear: forgiveness is infinite.
     God does not strike us with lightning when we make mistakes, even repeat mistakes. If we repent and truly seek His will, He is willing to reinstate us and put us right back to work for His Kingdom. Which is great news for a knucklehead like me who needs an occasional jolt to keep me moving in the right direction.