do-overs

Pro Tips on Sharks

Posted on by Betsy

One of the best things that happens in July is the Discovery Channel’s annual Shark Week, where every program is devoted to sharks. Shark movies, shark documentaries, shows that explore how sharks react in certain situations, (and the divers demonstrate each one with live sharks … anything for ratings!) shark commercials, shark talk shows … it’s a sharkapalooza.

I watched a show where a diver demonstrated where you can touch a shark and where you can’t. (Ummmm … just don’t touch the shark??) Our fascination with sharks fuels this entire industry. Shark attacks are on the rise. Sharks are not our natural predators, but we are increasingly getting into their habitats with disregard to our safety.

Here are a few tips from Shark Week:

If you fall off your paddle board near a shark, don’t thrash around. Stay very still (because that would feel so natural) and ease your way back on the board. Be cool. Betsy’s pro tip: To be even smarter, don’t paddle board in shark-infested water.

Don’t bring your iPhone or iWatch into the water. Your electronics attract the sharks, and they will approach you to ask to make a phone call or have a selfie taken with you. Betsy’s pro tip: Just don’t bring your electronics in the water, DUH.

If you encounter a shark in the wild, don’t reach out and touch it. If it comes for you anyway, touch it on the top of the snout and gently redirect it. But don’t touch it under the nose, or he will automatically open his jaws and eat you. Betsy’s pro tip: Don’t pet the sharks.

Sharks have excellent hearing, but they don’t like heavy metal bands or the sound of a camera flash going off. This was scientifically proven this week. One last pro tip: Next time you go surfing, invite Iron Maiden along.

Follow me for more pro tips!

Now while there are no stories in the Bible involving sharks, there is a pretty cool story about a whale and a man named Jonah. Jonah was an Israelite whom God had called to be a prophet. Jonah didn’t want to be a prophet, so he went on a sea cruise instead. God then raised a great storm to get Jonah’s attention. The sailors, realizing that Jonah’s disobedience had caused the storm, threw him overboard to try and save their ship. He was swallowed by a whale and lived for three days inside the creature, after which the fish “vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.” Thankful that his life had been spared, Jonah took up his prophetic mission:

Jonah 3 New International Version (NIV)

Jonah Goes to Nineveh

3 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”

3 Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. 4 Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” 5 The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

So here are three lessons from Jonah:

You can run from God, but you can’t hide.

God’s call may be hard, but it may also save lives (including your own).

God is a God of second chances.

Think about that today. Where is God calling you to do something difficult? Are you running? Or maybe you are in a dark fish-belly of disobedience and you’re sick and tired of the smell. Do you need a do-over? We serve a God of second chances. You get to come out and try again, this time with the power of the Holy Spirit helping you to make it.

God’s message to us today is that he is bigger than the shark, bigger than the whale, and bigger than anything this world has thrown at us to keep us down. He is a 24/7 God who is actively working to bring us to wholeness through joyful obedience and second chances.

Rise up, people. Our deliverer is here.

Via Shark Week Facebook page

Traveling through Time

Posted on by Betsy

I love a good book or movie that shows a character who is given a chance to go back in time. Movies like It’s A Wonderful Life, Groundhog Day and even silly shows like Hot Tub Time Machine can be parables that teach us the value of taking advantage of the do-overs that God offers us on a daily basis.

In the case of Hot Tub Time Machine, a character named Lou decides not to return to the present after he and his buddies are transported through time to a night that happened twenty years earlier. (This apparently is what happens when you pour an energy drink on the controls of a ski resort hot tub.) After reenacting the evening as their younger selves, the fellows eventually realize that they can return to the present by pouring another energy drink on the hot tub of their past. But Lou, now that he has had a chance to reflect on the last 20 years of his life, decides to remain in 1986 and try life again. He confesses that the carbon monoxide poisoning that landed him in the hospital in the beginning of the movie was actually a suicide attempt. When the others return, they live into an altered present that was changed by their going back in time. Many of their issues are resolved, and Lou took advantage of knowing what the “future” held by developing a company called Lougle, making him a millionaire.

What would you change if you could go back in time and do something over? What choices would you make the second time around?

One of the lessons here is to live well enough in the present so that you don’t need to go back and redo your actions. God is always using time to our advantage and offers an immediate reset anytime we confess and repent of our actions. As Moses wrote in Psalm 90, God has always been our help from forever in the past to forever in the future:

Psalm 90 (Common English Bible)

Lord, you have been our help,
    generation after generation.
2 Before the mountains were born,
    before you birthed the earth and the inhabited world—
    from forever in the past
    to forever in the future, you are God.

3 You return people to dust,
    saying, “Go back, humans,”
4     because in your perspective a thousand years
    are like yesterday past,
    like a short period during the night watch.
.
12 Teach us to number our days
    so we can have a wise heart.

So the better question is, what change can you make today that would be a better choice than what you chose yesterday? What could you redo right now that will make tomorrow an improvement for you and those around you?

God is able to help you grow a wise heart today if you’ll just let him.

Night Watch by Vic Woodall

Flub Ups and Do-Overs

Posted on by Betsy

Have you ever done something you instantly regretted, like missing the pop fly in the championship game, failing to get the big fish in the net, blurting out something totally inappropriate, or otherwise completely flubbing something up? I bet you wished you could get a do-over. We’ve all been there and wished that. Sometimes I think I live in the land of FlubUp. I’m actually starting to get mail there.

Today’s reading is a reminder that God always offers do-overs to us:

Deuteronomy 10:1-5 (New Revised Standard Version)

10:1 At that time the LORD said to me (Moses), “Carve out two tablets of stone like the former ones, and come up to me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood. 2 I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you smashed, and you shall put them in the ark.” 3 So I made an ark of acacia wood, cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. 

4 Then he wrote on the tablets the same words as before, the ten commandments that the LORD had spoken to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly; and the LORD gave them to me. 5 So I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark that I had made; and there they are, as the LORD commanded me.

 So, Moses and the people of Israel get a do-over! They had already received the Ten Commandments, inscribed in stone by the very finger of God. But when Moses returned with the tablets the first time, he discovered that in his absence the people had turned back to their idols, and his brother had made a golden calf for them to worship. Talk about a flub up! In righteous anger, Moses smashed the first set of tablets, symbolizing the breaking of God’s law by his people. 

 Why did the people turn so quickly away from the God who had just brought them out of slavery in Egypt to a hunk of metal shaped like a farm animal? Because people are created for worship. And so in place of God, we will worship anything: fame, money, the easy high, flattery, the intrigue of an inappropriate relationship, possessions … all kinds of fake things.

 We are the same as our desert ancestors. When we worship all of those inappropriate things, we reject our God who has provided for our every need, if not our every want. The comparison trap of social media only serves to make us want these things even more. Every time you scroll, stop, and pinch out to see an image more clearly, you end up comparing yourself to that person or thing. Whether it’s a celebrity’s new nose, your neighbor’s idyllic vacation photos, a purse you can’t afford, or an unattainable lifestyle, you are in reality worshipping something completely unreal. We lose sight of the difference between needs and wants. We end up creating golden calves multiple times each day, and God is forgotten in our pursuits of these false idols.

 But God, in his mercy, gave the people a do-over. God is always about second chances. Even as you are reading this, God is making his way toward you, offering you a second (or third, or eightieth) chance to get right with him. That is what the cross is all about: delivering us from the slavery of sin and death and bringing us into the land of redemption and freedom. 

 The question is, who or what will you worship? Know this for sure; your golden calf may be shiny and attractive, but it brings you nothing but the hollowness and superficiality of fake gold. 

 Quit falling for it. Turn to the one true God in humility and repentance, and do it over. God will give you every second chance that you need. Thanks be to God!

Needs a Do-Over by Michelle Robertson