Chance After Chance

Hey All -- little busy yesterday, but here's my first post:

As you may have remembered from the Bible, Pharaoh did not take the hints.  Despite the aforementioned plagues that his country endured, he would not free the slaves.  He was given even more generous chances to change his mind, but not even a swarm of locusts or an extreme power outage made him consider that there were forces in this realm even stronger than him.  He even tried to "bargain" with Moses and Aaron, and only free the menfolk, and not the whole Tribe!  Sheesh . . . .

So finally, the boom was lowered -- at midnight on what would later be known as Passover, every first-born son in every Egyptian family died.  In the ancient world, where most advanced cultures valued primogeniture, this was a big hit.  This was hitting Egypt where it hurt, and reminding Israel to treasure their first-borns even more!

Everyone deserves a fair warning, and everyone deserves a second, or maybe a third, chance.  But if you don't take advantage of those fair warnings, and make those changes that are desperately needed, consequences will happen.  And they won't be anyone else's fault but yours, because you were on notice of what could happen.

If Pharaoh had made those changes when he first saw blood and frogs in the Nile, he could have avoided serious consequences for Egypt.  But instead, he wanted to show how tough, how loud, how badass he was.  Well, it's not always a good idea to do that to everyone.  If you're a child, and you act that way to your parents, you might get thrown out of the house or disinherited.  If you're an employee, and you act that way to your boss, you might get fired, and denied unemployment benefits for misconduct.  If you're in school (I mean a good school) and you act that way to your teacher or principal, you might get suspended or expelled.  If you're in a situation like this, you screw up, and you receive a warning, whether it's a friendly one or a threatening one, do yourself a favor and listen to it.

Compared to the consequences you could have received otherwise, that warning was a gift.  Be smart and accept it!  That doesn't mean you turn sycophantic and start apologizing for every word that comes out of your mouth.  But it does mean that once you've been warned, and told what the consequences of your actions might be, have the good grace to change those actions to prevent those consequences.

Go In Peace . . . .