I follow this rule especially when the event takes place super early in the morning. I reason to myself that the more steps I can clear out of the way the night before, the more time I will have in the morning. And if you have a detector for baloney, then you’d know that the real reason I do this is so that I can sleep longer in the morning.
So there I was this past Saturday night. Isabella was going to sleep and I was scurrying about the house grabbing my dress pants, shoes, shirt and accessories. Done! All ready for Sunday morning.
I do this in the pitch black mind you. If you want the reason for this, you’ll have to reach far back into my childhood when my dad initiated the, “Are you going to pay the electric bill?" speech. Dad’s speech worked; in fact it worked so well that only an Owl has better night vision than me and my brother.
However, this past Sunday my plan backfired. And boy did it backfire badly.
Walking to my car this past Sunday I did not pay a lot of attention to the color of my pants due to my stinging anger with the fact that it was like 18 degrees AND the season of Spring was supposed be here. (You have to live in Western, Pa. to understand).
At church, I looked in the mirror and noticed that my tie, my shirt, my shoes & belt looked pretty fancy …
But something was off.
When I stepped out into the sunlight, my Black pants that I had laid out the night before suddenly, even magically, turned Navy Blue! I was now Rev. Fashion Faux-pas. I was telling a friend about this issue, and they told me that they run into this problem all the time. They also gave me a little advice on how to avoid this dreadful mistake in the future. Here is the test they perform when choosing clothes that are Black or Navy Blue. They simply get the 2 garments; hold them right next to one another, and bring them to a bright light. By placing the two colors side by side and exposing them to the light, each garment is easy to distinguish.
Do you ever feel like you spend a lot of your time trying to distinguish between what is almost right and almost wrong? I mean, spotting evil is pretty simple. Along with having an eye for what is clearly right too. But I think many suffer from not having a fine-tuned outlook on life.
Discernment these days is tough. The Apostle Paul says, "Examine everything carefully & hold fast to that which is good." Oftentimes, we do not know what is the right thing or wrong thing to do because we are not holding our decisions against the real thing. We ask our friends and family. We search the Net. Or we gauge our lives off of current trends, popularity polls or what our society finds acceptable. If that describes you, you are making the same mistake that I did last Saturday night when I picked out my dress pants in the dark. C. S. Lewis once stated, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” Perhaps this is what the Psalmist meant when he wrote, “Your Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path.” Saturday night, I needed to hold my Navy Blue pants right next to the Black ones in the light to make a proper decision. Life’s journey is not a straight path as it offers many twists and turns. Do not underestimate living your life in the light! Each decision you make, whether you think it is a big or small one changes the course of your life.
Live in the Light.
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