This week's Theme: For Want Of
Day 1: The Little Foxes
“I only drove it one block!” I protested to my mechanic as I explained that the car was at a standstill. He led me through a series of questions and then gave me the bad news. My car engine was dead. Forever dead.
I was a young adult, and it was my very first car. The engine light had come on when I was almost home, and I thought I could get home before calling the mechanic. Unfortunately it was a “pull over and stop immediately” type of light. I did not know that.
Neither did I know the simple maintenance step that would have prevented the light in the first place. It was a tough, expensive, lesson about little things. A lesson that reminds me of a poem I once learned:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost For want of a shoe the horse was lost For want of a horse the rider was lost For want of a rider the battle was lost For want of a battle the kingdom was lost And all for the want of a horseshoe nail
~ Anon
Fortunately, my “for want of” cost me only a car. But other “for want of” tallies have been high, even payable in human toll.
Space travel, for instance, though a long way from horses and horseshoes, provides one of the most tragic examples of successive build up to disaster. In January 1986, a mere 73 seconds after liftoff, the Challenger Space Shuttle became engulfed in flames and soon after plunged into the Atlantic Ocean. All seven team members perished.
A full investigation ensued, lasting several months. The investigative commission was highly critical of the agency responsible for the space program—the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The commission described widespread organizational and cultural patterns and perspectives within NASA that they believed led to the disaster. Things overlooked or treated as “inconsequential” added up to a terrible catastrophe.
In the spiritual world, as in the natural, the same laws are at work. And the wisdom of the Scripture instructs us in concepts such as care, and prudence, and diligence, and attention to detail. One of these is an intriguing passage about little things that can have enormous consequences:
Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom (Song of Songs 2:15).
In these later years, I try to live from the benefit of my experience. Mine and others'. I pray for wisdom to spot the little foxes—the little foxes that try to hide among the vines that God desires to flourish.
And I have learned to pay careful attention to vehicle maintenance!
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