Taking responsibility
One thing about moving out to the country on my small farm...Jesus' agrarian parables make a lot of sense to me now. Like leaving 99 sheep to find the one that wandered away. My whole family realizes that we are responsible to the animals we have on our farm and we are all very protective of them.
Just the other evening, our farm was attacked by a dog. My son saw it first, and notified me. You see, dogs are notoriously bad for not only our lamb, but our chickens as well. I looked out the back window and saw our llama ready for action. We have him as a guard animal, and he is very protective of his charges. Then the dog in question trotted by the back door with a chicken in her mouth. That was the last straw for me, and I grabbed the shotgun to take care of the dog. I had to go through the garage to get the shotgun, and there were feathers all over the garage and driveway. Around the side of the house, and the dog had gone. My son and wife pointed out to me the way it went, we went over that way, and here comes the dog again. I noticed it had a collar on, but any dog owner out here knows the importance of keeping them properly locked up so they don't disturb livestock.
Just then a truck came around the corner, so I hesitated on dispatching the animal, and thankfully for me it was the dog's owner. You see, I don't take pleasure in killing animals, I was just taking care of my critters here.
Well, the owner was very apologetic and offered to pay for our losses. I told him that I was so happy he came by when he did because I was getting ready to kill his dog. He told me he understood.
That really struck me. Here I am ready to remove his dog, and he apologized and understood his animal needed to be removed. He took responsibility for what happened.
How often do we get caught up in excuses? We don't take responsibility for things that we have caused to occur, rather we find an excuse as to why it was not our fault.
Here at RCC we have been going through a longer series on the book of Proverbs. We've been asked as a church to read through the book every month (there are 31 chapters so one a day does it). How many of us have found excuses as to why we have not done this a few times already? We've been in this series for a few months now, we all should have more than one read under our belts!
What about prayer time. Last week, I challenged people to spend just a few minutes each day talking to God. How many people say they don't have enough time?
We need to take responsibility for what we are doing. If we are not reading our scriptures then we don't get to cite time as the reason we don't do it unless it really is no time. That would be a strange world, though, we people didn't have enough time for television or surfing the internet or whatever takes your time. We need to take responsibility and admit that it is not important enough for us to set aside time for. This is looking in the mirror and reporting on what you see. This is taking the time to understand what is important to us. Once we are honest with ourselves and get past the excuses then we can take some time to decide if we like what we see or not.
Let's drop the excuses and take some responsibility. We might not always like the truth, but the beauty of it is we always have the opportunity to change.
Just the other evening, our farm was attacked by a dog. My son saw it first, and notified me. You see, dogs are notoriously bad for not only our lamb, but our chickens as well. I looked out the back window and saw our llama ready for action. We have him as a guard animal, and he is very protective of his charges. Then the dog in question trotted by the back door with a chicken in her mouth. That was the last straw for me, and I grabbed the shotgun to take care of the dog. I had to go through the garage to get the shotgun, and there were feathers all over the garage and driveway. Around the side of the house, and the dog had gone. My son and wife pointed out to me the way it went, we went over that way, and here comes the dog again. I noticed it had a collar on, but any dog owner out here knows the importance of keeping them properly locked up so they don't disturb livestock.
Just then a truck came around the corner, so I hesitated on dispatching the animal, and thankfully for me it was the dog's owner. You see, I don't take pleasure in killing animals, I was just taking care of my critters here.
Well, the owner was very apologetic and offered to pay for our losses. I told him that I was so happy he came by when he did because I was getting ready to kill his dog. He told me he understood.
That really struck me. Here I am ready to remove his dog, and he apologized and understood his animal needed to be removed. He took responsibility for what happened.
How often do we get caught up in excuses? We don't take responsibility for things that we have caused to occur, rather we find an excuse as to why it was not our fault.
Here at RCC we have been going through a longer series on the book of Proverbs. We've been asked as a church to read through the book every month (there are 31 chapters so one a day does it). How many of us have found excuses as to why we have not done this a few times already? We've been in this series for a few months now, we all should have more than one read under our belts!
What about prayer time. Last week, I challenged people to spend just a few minutes each day talking to God. How many people say they don't have enough time?
We need to take responsibility for what we are doing. If we are not reading our scriptures then we don't get to cite time as the reason we don't do it unless it really is no time. That would be a strange world, though, we people didn't have enough time for television or surfing the internet or whatever takes your time. We need to take responsibility and admit that it is not important enough for us to set aside time for. This is looking in the mirror and reporting on what you see. This is taking the time to understand what is important to us. Once we are honest with ourselves and get past the excuses then we can take some time to decide if we like what we see or not.
Let's drop the excuses and take some responsibility. We might not always like the truth, but the beauty of it is we always have the opportunity to change.
posted by Pastor Tom at 7:09 AM
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