Obey

A few weeks ago my family was having a picnic and I had my parents give us kids some "life advice." I just figured that it would be interesting to hear specifics; we see how they live, but I wanted to hear why they decided to live the way they do. It sparked (obviously) some interesting discussions, and then I sort of forgot about it.

But last night our family went out to eat in celebration of two major events (moving here and my dad buying his business) that actually happened in September, but we always forget about it until later in the fall. So yes, it's October, and we're finally celebrating our Family Day of Awesomeness. Or whatever it's called.

So, while we were sitting around, waiting for the food (most specifically, the rolls, which they forgot to give us, and we were all pretty hungry for them, sigh) I thought it would be fun to get some advice from the other side of the family. My little sister (she'll always be my little sister, no matter how old she gets!) is nearly 16 (see? not exactly little any longer), so I asked her to give all of us some life advice. By the time I was her age I thought I had a pretty good handle on things (little did I know...) and thought it would be interesting to get her take on the subject.

She thought for a few minutes, and then came out with one of the wisest things I've heard in a long time. "Disobedience is never worth it." That was all. She just said it as if, well, of course, life advice was her speciality.

Yeah, I wasn't that smart when I was 15.

But it made me think of the verse in 1 Samuel 15, that says that "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." Then it continues about rebellion being as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness as iniquity and idolatry (those verses used to strike a great deal of fear into my young heart, especially as I was wont to be rather stubborn), but I was mostly thinking about the obedience part of the verse.

You know, Saul really thought (so it appears) he was doing the right thing in the chapter--he sacrificed to the Lord from the best of the flocks and such. What's so bad about that? Well, nothing, unless the Lord had asked that you, you know, obey Him specifically. And this was the incident where Saul spared Agag, and later, of course, Haman the Agagite tried to destroy the Jewish race, which didn't work out so well for him, but this is off-topic. Go read Esther in case you need to brush up on how unfortunate the whole sparing-of-Agag situation was.

Where was I?

Ah, yes. So Saul did something that, in and of itself, wasn't bad, but certainly had negative consequences. And I can think of so many choices I've made in life (this is depressing: if I've already done so many wrong things and I'm not even a quarter of a century old, how much opportunity will there be in my life for wrongs to be committed? Ugh) where it wasn't as if I were doing something "wrong" per se, but I knew the difference. There are things that leave a sharp bitter taste in your mouth, and you know you don't have peace. Thankfully, I rarely end up losing my kingdom because of it (of course, I don't have a kingdom to lose. Note to self: find a kingdom) but there are still consequences.

So, maybe if I'd asked my sister a few years ago for life advice, I would have been less biscuit-y in some of my choices.

Maybe I need a shirt that says "Obedience is better." On the back it could say stuff about sacrifice or fat of rams, but I'm not sure that people would understand it. The "Obedience is Better" tagline makes sense in and of itself.

Like John H Sammis always said, "Trust and obey, for there's no other way, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey!"