Daddy, Can We Get A Puppy?
If you are a parent, you’ve heard these words before: “Mommy, Daddy, can we get a puppy?” And, if you are smart, you responded with the following: “You know puppies are a lot of trouble. You would have to walk it at least three times a day and make sure it is fed. You would have to bathe it at least twice a week and brush it every day. You would also have to train it and take it outside to use the bathroom. And if it ever poo-poo’s or tee-tee’s in the house, it would be your responsibility to clean it up.”
Although the above lecture is normally used as a doggie deterrent, most children respond by saying, “I don’t care. I wouldn’t mind doing all that as long as I had a puppy!” So we break down and buy the puppy, and a month later we are stuck feeding, walking and cleaning up after it. The exasperated child says, “I just didn’t know how much work it would be!”
In chapter 8 of I Samuel, we find an aging Samuel and a demanding Israelite nation that was much like a child demanding a puppy of his parents. But instead of a puppy, Israel was demanding a king. Samuel attempted to warn them. Paraphrased, he said, “You know kings are a lot of trouble. He will take your sons and turn them into soldiers. He will take your daughters and make them cook for him. And much of the food they will be cooking will be food he has taken from you. Also, if he wants to, he will take your servants and animals and make them his. He will treat you so badly that it will make you cry out in regret.”
Yet just like a child wanting a puppy, they replied, “We don’t care. We wouldn’t mind all that as long as we had a king.” Although Samuel couldn’t have made it any clearer, they could not see through their own selfishness to the negative result that would come from their request. The fact is that when we are being completely selfish, no amount of good reasoning will help us see things differently. We become blinded by our own desires.
The difficult thing about a heart of selfishness is that it is hard to detect. We think we are being reasonable, justified, or even optimistic, when in reality we are blinded by our own wants.
Running On Half Battery
Drowsiness isn’t just an annoyance, it’s a significant health and safety issue. In fact, in 1990 “Insufficient Sleep Syndrome” was added to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders. It is suggested that tens of thousands of people die each year, including thousands on our roadways, as a result of “drowsiness.”
Drowsiness produces a sort of inattentiveness that can bring great harm both to self and others. According to Harvard Medical School:
Insufficient sleep may not have led the news in reporting on serious accidents in recent decades. However, that does't mean fatigue and inattention due to sleep loss did't play a role in [many] disasters. For example, investigators have ruled that sleep deprivation was a significant factor in the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, as well as the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl.
Investigations of the grounding of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker, as well as the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, have concluded that sleep deprivation also played a critical role in these accidents.
Says Dr. Max Hirshkowitz, an internationally recognized sleep expert with 40 years of experience in sleep research and sleep disorders, “People can grow accustomed to being tired, but they don’t actually begin to need less sleep. We’re fooling ourselves. We’re running on half a battery, and we think we’re OK. We don’t even know what it’s like to be alert anymore.”
The world will drain us and rob us of our spiritual energy and alertness if we let it. We must purpose daily, moment-by-moment, to seek our rest (and restoration!) in Christ (2 Corinthians 4:16). Only in this way will we find ourselves alert, watchful, and expectantly awaiting the return of our Savior. To this end, the Scriptures call us to be ready.
But we Christians can fool ourselves into thinking that we are “OK,” that we are alert, watchful and waiting for the return of the Lord, when in reality our senses have been dulled. We can be duped into a sort of inattentiveness that can result in great harm to both self and others as we fail in our own readiness and we fail in warning others.
To borrow the words of the sleep expert, "We’re running on half a battery, and we think we’re OK. We don’t even know what it’s like to be alert anymore.”
"But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober.
For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing" (1 Thessalonians 5:1-11).
When You See A Turtle On A Post
In his book MAKING TODAY COUNT FOR ETERNITY, Kent Crockett relates this story about famed author Alex Haley:
The late Alex Haley, who wrote ROOTS, had on his office wall a unique picture of a turtle sitting atop a fence post. When people asked him about it, Haley would say, “If you see a turtle on a fence post, you know that he had some help. Any time I start thinking ‘Wow, isn’t this marvelous what I’ve done?’ I look at that picture and remember how this turtle, me, got up on that post.”
Crockett concludes:
A turtle can’t get on top of a fence post less a hand picks it up and puts it there. Nor can we receive promotion without the hand of God. He puts us were He chooses, whether in a higher or lower position.
“It is God who judges: He brings one down, he exalts another” (Psalm 75:7).
Kent Crockett graduated from Texas A&M University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and is the senior pastor of the Church of Living Water in Prattville, Alabama. He is the author of The 911 Handbook, Making Today Count for Eternity, and I Once Was Blind but Now I Squint, and has been published in a number of Christian magazines.