Josiah Road

Meet the neighbors?

posted by Daniel Blackaby 21Oct

Say goodbye to the icy chill of a Canadian winter breeze. Say hello to the warmth and beach infested Hawaiian horizon. Thoughts of snorkelling, sunbathing, and chilled lemonade pervaded my mind as my family pulled into our resort condo. My siblings and I had set aside our constant bickering and conflict of the seven-hour flight and agreed on one thing…the beach wasn’t going to swim in itself. Bring it on! Dashing into the condo, we chucked our bags into our rooms and in a fluid, unbroken stream of movement pivoted and exited out the back door. Without a single glance backwards to see if my family were in pursuit I made the five-minute sprint towards the watery oasis. Seven hours of airplane daydreaming paled in comparison to the reality of this moment. Tropical fish of all colors zipped around me as the warm waves splashed against me. Twenty minutes passed in the blink of an eye; my joy-filled trance was only brought to an end by the rumbling in my stomach. The gourmet dinner of stale pretzels, generously provided by my airline, apparently did not suffice.

After much pondering, I finally concluded that the beach wasn’t going anywhere, and I could spare a few moments to tend to the preservation of my body. Urged on by the groans of my stomach I ran through the back door, leaving my family behind at the beach, and headed straight to the kitchen.

To my delight, I discovered that my parents had graciously stuffed the fridge and pantry full of Vanilla Coke and double-stuffed-mint Oreos. The next couple of minutes were filled with inexplicable bliss and gluttony. Much too lazy to change out of my wet swimsuit I plopped down on the couch, tossed my feet onto the table, and switched on some ESPN. Life was good; from the large flat-screen TV, to the soft couch, to the man staring at me in a towel, to the Oreos…Man in a towel?! There stood a large man wearing nothing but a towel, “Um…can I help you?” he asked. Oh no. My peripheral view caught a glimpse of my family happily filing into the condo next door. Oh please no. Jumping up I looked down at the coke-stained, crumb-covered, soaking-wet couch. Oh please, please no. “Um…actually I think I was just about to leave…um…you want me to recycle this can?” As Christians we must be careful. My first two years of college were spent at a large, secular school. My professors would bash biblical thinking on a weekly basis and mock beliefs such as creation, always with alleged biblical evidence to disprove biblical claims. I learned an important lesson through this: If I don’t know what IS true about the Bible, I’ll never be able to recognize what ISN’T true. If you don’t keep your world view tied firmly to biblical truth, you’ll soon find yourself in dangerous, strange and unfamiliar places.

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things …” 2 Timothy 4:3-5