Watch your step, it’s slippey out there!

Posted by Rod Hamilton on Apr 18 2009

“Their foot shall fall in due time” Deuteronomy 32:35

I remember the first year I lived in Louisville, KY in the winter time, 1992. Up til then I was always either a SoCal guy (I say that only to sound cool) or a Dirty South guy (I say that too to sound cool) and lived, aside from those places, for a far too fleeting moment in Hawaii.(<== that is cool, but I was only 1). Suffice to say, I didn’t know too much about walking on icy patches, but you learn quickly, and usually by negative reinforcement.

I was walking one cold, frozen February day in Louisville through some ice and snow. The ice and snow became one in a few spots, making walking pretty treacherous, or at least for those who already knew the perils of walking on such terrain. I, with my hands in my coat pockets and donning my leather soled shoes, did not recognize such danger and walked on. The first hard lesson I learned on that snowy day is one of physics and statistics. If a person, dressed as I was and postured as I was, were to step on a big ‘ol hunk of ice, the rate at which he falls makes it statistically impossible for him to remove his hands from his pockets to relieve the severity of the landing.

You get my point, don’t you? Whether I’m aware of the danger or not, it’s still a real danger. Whether I was prepared or not, the slip still happened and the resulting plummet and crash were no better or worse than if I had known it was coming and did nothing about it.

So what did I really learn?
1) When I’m walking into a slippery situation, whether literally or figuratively, I should be prepared to brace myself. Hands in pockets is way low on the list of ways to do that.
2) There are both signs of danger and people all around who have been there and done that. Wise counsel from experienced slippers is a good idea!

So all of this “slipperiness” reminds me of a classic sermon from Johnathan Edwards called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Chances are, if you’re in a Bible teaching, Bible believing church, you’ve heard of this sermon. Well, here’s your chance to read it. It’s well worth your time, and you can read it online here: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God