Today’s Scripture Reading (August 15,
2016): Proverbs 1
About 83 of
the world’s 196 countries have a problem with land mines. In 30 of those
countries, the problem is considered serious. It was a problem and Princess
Dianna brought to the world’s attention during her short life. When she was
visiting Angola, she did some of the most un-royal like things – like dropping
her hand from a royal wave to shake hands with people. And embracing and crying
with the wounded; those who had lost appendages because they had stepped on a
mine. Throughout the adult portion of her life,
the paparazzi hounded her, right up to the tragic moment of her death.
But in
Angola and other places affected by a landmine epidemic, while having to shoo them
away from her private conversations with the victims, she was able to make use
of them to shine a light on the problem. She is credited with being an informal
force behind the Ottawa Treaty banning the use of anti-personnel mines. (A
treaty, by the way, that the United States, Russian and China have never
signed.)
The problem with
landmines is that they lie hidden and
that they exist long after the war that caused them to be hidden in the first
place has ended. One M*A*S*H episode illustrated the problem with a scene where
a father sends his daughters into a field to look for mines. Meanwhile, dad
holds his ox back until he knows that the
field is safe. The message of the dramedy episode was that in some parts of the
world, not only are land mines a real problem, but fathers value their
livestock more than they do their daughters. I am not sure if that ever
happened, but the reverse has been common practice in some places in the world
– cows and heavy livestock have been sent into fields in an attempt to explode any
leftover mines.
Maybe we
could rewrite this proverb for our own time – how useless would it be to place
a landmine where everyone can see it – and step around it. The danger of the
land mine is that we don’t see it; we stumble into it. Solomon uses this as an
illustration of how evil enters into our lives. We don’t recognize evil as
evil. If we did we would step around it instead of opening up our lives to it.
I have never heard a smoker dying of cancer say that they expected this result.
Instead, they admit that they either
didn’t know of the dangers or didn’t
think that it would happen to them. Instead,
we embrace evil, believing that at the very least it will bring good into our
lives. But instead, evil spreads. And the hidden land mines go off in our
personal lives, often leaving us to wonder what exactly went wrong.
Solomon’s
advice is to be careful where you place your feet. The list is long of people
who have stumbled into problems because they weren’t paying close enough
attention. Whatever you do, don’t add your name to that list.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading:
Proverbs 2
Personal Note: Happy Anniversary to
my Sister and Brother-in-Law, Cheri and Laurie. I hope it is a great day!
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