A Jack-ass in the night
The other night Greg (my roomate) and I were driving along a back road back to our farm and something crazy happened. We were having a similar conversation as we usually do where he attempts to push my buttons in order to get a reaction. In my haste he got the reaction he desired and I began to search in the crevasses of my brain for the correct adjective to bark back at him. Picking the perfect word, one not too crude but not juvenile either, I yelped, “You’re a Jack-ass!”
Then as surely as I stand before you today..three seconds later in the hollowness of the night a large animal walks across the road. Greg alertly honks his horn to frighten the deer or...is it a moose?? It has dark fur! It is not a deer?..As we approach in ironic justice Greg and I hypothetically wipe the disbelief from our eyes and realize that what we just saw was a donkey.
We laugh and realize that the odds of that just happening are very slim seeing as I have not called someone a jack-ass in months.. and then seconds after I use it in jest a donkey trots across the road? Ultimately we both believe that was surely God teaching me a lesson. Greg has been encouraging me for months to control my tongue. He reminds me what
James 3:8-11says.
“This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can't tame a tongue—it's never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!
My friends, this can't go on. A spring doesn't gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don't bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don't bear apples, do they? You're not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?”
Finally I got the message my king and all it took was a jack-ass in the night.
Then as surely as I stand before you today..three seconds later in the hollowness of the night a large animal walks across the road. Greg alertly honks his horn to frighten the deer or...is it a moose?? It has dark fur! It is not a deer?..As we approach in ironic justice Greg and I hypothetically wipe the disbelief from our eyes and realize that what we just saw was a donkey.
We laugh and realize that the odds of that just happening are very slim seeing as I have not called someone a jack-ass in months.. and then seconds after I use it in jest a donkey trots across the road? Ultimately we both believe that was surely God teaching me a lesson. Greg has been encouraging me for months to control my tongue. He reminds me what
James 3:8-11says.
“This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can't tame a tongue—it's never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!
My friends, this can't go on. A spring doesn't gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don't bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don't bear apples, do they? You're not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?”
Finally I got the message my king and all it took was a jack-ass in the night.
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