EVER DO ANYTHING STUPID?

By Ada Brownell

After I’d been on vacation I went to the lunch area and my mind must not have arrived yet. I stuck my mug of tea water in the refrigerator and my Coke in the microwave. I caught myself just before I pressed the start button.

The day before Deputy Attorney General Byron (Whizzer) White was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, I walked into the press conference and shook hands with a local TV news anchor instead of White. Of course, this was early in my newspaper career. I like excuses for stupid.

Our trio, the Damascus Singers, was invited to participate in a singspiration service. I was appointed to introduce our song.

“We’ve heard a lot of great music tonight,” I said. “Now we’re going to sing, ‘If it Keeps Getting Better.’” Took me a minute to realize why the audience laughed.

Some cases of the stupids are more serious, and could be deadly. Take Eve, for instance. What on earth was she doing talking to Satan, who took on the form of a snake that could communicate?

I guess talking wasn’t Eve’s problem, it was the listening. God already told Adam, and I’m sure he shared it with his new wife, never to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If they did, the Lord warned, they would die.

I don’t think Eve paid much attention to that. Probably that’s where she came down with the stupids virus
.

“You won’t die!” the serpent proclaimed. “God knows if you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing God and evil.”

Eve had a good eye for beauty and saw the tree was good for food and pleasant to the eyes. If she’d been in a mall, she’d grabbed her credit card. She reached up, picked it, and ate. Like any temptress, she shared it with her husband.

Who would notice a few bites of fruit? God did because of what the tree represented. Suddenly their innocence vanished. They tried to hide their nakedness because now it seemed wrong, yet God knew they disobeyed and elaborated on the consequences.

Perhaps they didn't comprehend the horror of yielding to temptation until they had to bury a son, murdered by his brother. I imagine their tears partly were shed because death became a fact of life when they sinned against God.

Hiding had done them no good. God called for Adam. The Lord knew where the man was, but Adam needed to come out and confess.

Amazing that God, who gave freedom to choose whether to serve Him, almost instantly revealed He would bring a way to restore immortality to humankind. He would send a Redeemer (Genesis 3:15) who would conquer Satan and death. That Redeemer is Jesus, God’s only Son (John 3:16).

All through the Bible we see God’s great love and His willingness to forgive sin. He doesn’t hold being stupid against us. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

© 2014 Ada B. Brownell

Ah! Stupids flee when we finally get smart. Some good ways to increase knowledge: READ

All of the following books contain elements to increase faith, including The Lady Fugitive where Jenny learns God is concerned for every one of His sheep.

***

To celebrate The Lady Fugitive’s release, all four of Ada Brownell’s other e-books will be free Sept. 25-28: Imagine the Future You, a motivational Bible study; Joe the Dreamer: The Castle and the Catapult, a novel; Swallowed by Life: Mysteries of Death, Resurrection and the Eternal, a Bible study; and Confessions of a Pentecostal, published in 1978 by the Assemblies of God and released in 2011 for Kindle.

 All are available on Ada Brownell’s author page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KJ2C06

TAKE A LOOK AT THE NOVEL, THE LADY FUGITIVE WHILE YOU'RE THERE!