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Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
Hebrews 12:14
Reflect
Raccoons are adorable. People tend to love the raccoon’s mask-like facial features and their ability to use their paws almost like hands. When they’re very young, they can be very cute pets, but as they get older, raccoons tend to lapse to their wild ways because, after all, they are wild animals.
Gary Richmond is a pastor today, but before he worked in ministry, he worked with various species of animals at the Los Angeles Zoo. In his book, A View From the Zoo, he recounts an interesting story about a friend of his named Julie and her pet raccoon, Bandit. In a conversation with his zoo’s veterinarian, Gary mentioned Bandit and Julie and inquired why more people didn’t have raccoons as pets. The answer was alarming.
Apparently, raccoons go through a biological change when they’re about two years old that makes them unpredictable and increasingly aggressive. This change, the doctor said, is universal. It happens to every raccoon. At that point Bandit was more than 18 months old, so, according to Richmond, “Since a 30-pound raccoon can be equal to a 100-pound dog in a scrap, I felt compelled to mention the coming change to Julie.”
Julie listened, but her answer was, “It will be different with me.” She had such a great relationship with Bandit that she knew he would never do anything to harm her. Three months after Gary talked to Julie, Bandit attacked Julie without warning. She needed extensive plastic surgery to repair the facial injuries sustained in the attack.
Most people think the consequences from their actions will go differently than other people. On the day he was drafted by the Boston Celtics, Len Bias tried cocaine for the first time. He didn’t expect it to kill him, but it did. Teenage actress Jamie Lynn Spears, who was the star of the hit show Zoey 101, didn’t expect to have her career derailed by pregnancy when she was just 16 years old, but it was. Stone Foltz didn’t expect that joining a fraternity at Bowling Green State University would lead to a dangerous drinking challenge that would kill him, but it did.
Too many times we think, “It will be different with me,” but it rarely is. Sin pays its wages, and the cost is often much higher than what we have in our accounts. God calls each of us to a life of holiness and righteousness, and that requires that we be realistic about the world and about ourselves. The Bible warns about the dangers of sin, and often we will get warnings from those around us about potential consequences of our actions. Sin and temptation comes for all of us, but it is up to each of us to heed the warnings and to pursue the will and ways of the Lord in these moments.
Reflection copyright © 2024 Doug DeBolt and Charles Fulton
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
