Proverbs 16:18

The road of right living bypasses evil; watch your step and save your life.

Prudence- Taking the trouble to think out what you are doing, and what is likely to come of it. And then making the wise choice.

I often think back to when my good friend Jeff was in medical school, and the wild stories he would share while he did his rotations in the ER downtown. He amazed me by telling me that people are shot and stabbed every single night here in Indy. Most are just never reported on the news because there’s probably just too many to report. (And let’s face it, if they reported all of them, it would get boring after a while for the viewers.) Though it is not literally funny, we could not help but crack up at the recurring tales he would hear nightly from these victims of violence, “Man, I was just minding my own business, walking down the street and these dudes starting hitting me with a baseball bat and stabbed me in the leg!” Every time, Jeff said, this was the basic story. They didn’t do anything to anybody and then someone came up to beat them down for no reason at all.

Well, as Proverbs indicates, this is rarely the case. In the ER, they would inevitably come to find out that these patients either owed someone drug money, stole someone’s girlfriend, stole someone’s money, or usually some combination of those three.

Generally the road of right living does indeed bypass evil, at least here in Indy. There are some parts of the world where it is much more dangerous, obviously. But the principle does apply generally I believe.

Matthew 16:2-3

Jesus answered, “At sunset you say we will have good weather, because the sky is red. And in the morning you say that it will be a rainy day, because the sky is dark and red. You see these signs in the sky and know what they mean. In the same way, you see the things that I am doing now, but you don’t know their meaning.

We take the time to repetitively observe cause and effect in the world and make predictions, and sometimes even adjust our life accordingly. Yet we rarely use the same amount of energy to observe our Creator, to get to really know Him and work hard to understand
what He meant on earth and means to us now. And adjust our life accordingly.

I often think of the effort, money and time spent on sending things to space, or on weapons and war, or on better video games, and how better that energy could be spent on caring for people who are so in need of God’s love shown to them through touch and experience.