About a month ago I injured my knee. I’m not exactly sure how I did it, but one morning I woke up and my knee felt like it was on fire and I could barely bend it or put any weight on that leg. The doctor said it was just a pretty bad strain and gave me some rehab exercises to do at home. It would be in my best interest to do these exercises everyday, but do I? Nope. I don’t have a desire to stay injured, but yet I’m not doing all I can to heal. You would think that improving my well-being would be toward the top of my to-do list, but some days it’s not.
Another area I do this in is with Microsoft Rewards. Each day if I just take about 10 minutes to do searches on Bing, I can earn enough reward points to get a month of free Hulu. Yet there are days that go by that I don’t do those searches, and then in turn I’ve had to pay for Hulu. Again, I don’t have a strong desire to pay for Hulu. Yet sometimes that has been the case.
I don’t think anyone that has ever been in a car wreck thought, “That is exactly what I wanted to happen.” Sometimes we just get off course.
I’ve been reading through the Bible in a year, and a huge theme in the Old Testament is the Israelites not worshipping God and going into captivity as a result. God sent them judges, kings, and prophets to try to get them to stay on the right path, yet the repeatedly strayed. I’m sure that the Israelites weren’t thinking, “What can we do to screw up our lives?” Yet time and time again they got off the path God had for them. 2 Kings 17:13-14 tells us,
Again and again the Lord had sent his prophets and seers to warn both Israel and Judah: “Turn from all your evil ways. Obey my commands and decrees—the entire law that I commanded your ancestors to obey, and that I gave you through my servants the prophets.” 14 But the Israelites would not listen. They were as stubborn as their ancestors who had refused to believe in the Lord their God.
God sent so many people to warn them yet they didn’t listen. Reading the Old Testament can seem like you are listening to a broken record. You just wonder why they don’t ever learn.
Yet here I am with the same tendencies.
Here I am doing the same thing. There are things I know are for my benefit and I am not doing them. I am an Israelite. I shouldn’t have to set a reminder to rehab my knee, but that is what it has come down to. I shouldn’t have to use an app called Streaks to encourage me to have my quiet time, but it helps. I guess I’ll do what I have to so I stay on that path. I don’t want my life to end up sounding like the broken record of the Old Testament Israelites.
until next time…