Suddenly our garage door would not stay closed. Once it got to the bottom it promptly reopened. Over and over I checked to see that the light beam was properly aligned. It was. There wasn’t any stick or stone to cause the safety feature to reopen it. When it was open I did see a dead horsefly dangling overhead from a spider web filament, but thought nothing of it. After an hour or more it finally dawned on me. When the door reached the cement floor the dead horsefly was lowered just enough to dangle in the light beam and thus reopen the door. Duh! So why did it take me so long to catch on? Sometimes I am so dull. The door wasn’t broken. It was functioning the way it was designed.
Sometimes we have little peccadilloes that annoy other people and even if we know they are there, we think nothing of them. Maybe we wonder why we didn’t get a promotion we wanted and we never make the connection that we are annoying. Sometimes we have a habit of eating something we really know we shouldn’t but, “Hey, it’s nothing big.” Perhaps we make rolling stops at stop signs but, “Hey, I’m almost stopped.” They are little things that we know are there but we rarely make the connection regarding their impediment to a better life.
The process of life-long development is often paying attention to little things; stepping outside ourselves and looking at ourselves from an exterior perspective. I often wonder how God sees us since He sees and knows everything. I must confess that sometimes I wish He did not know what I was thinking. But the alternative isn’t that great. I’m glad He’s there.
Written by Roger Bothwell on June 21, 2012
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org