Experience enables you to recognize a mistake every time you repeat it.
"Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil." 1 Thess. 5:21-22
When I was nine, I had a kid who lived a couple of doors down who was a master at practical jokes. I got the old bucket-over-the-door trick more than once. One time he took the chain completely off my bike and then challenged me to a race back to my house. We started at his front door and he yelled, "Ready! Set! Go!" We took off running to our bikes. When I jumped on mine I started to furiously pedal and didn't go anywhere.
Ha. Ha.
So one day I decided to get even. Since his pranks were getting more and more involved, I figured I'd do one so sophisticated that he would never be able to match it. So I decided to make a Rube Goldberg machine. (No I didn't know the name of it back then. In fact, I just looked it up.) A Rube Goldberg machine is a contraption that has a lot of moving parts that wants to achieve a simple goal. The game "Mousetrap" is an example of a Rube Goldberg machine.
So in my room I decided to do an alternative to the old bucket-above-the-door trick.
First I wired some kite string to my door knob. It pulled a block that sent my hot wheels car down an orange-colored track. The car hit a plastic ball which then rolled down several pieces of old electric railroad track. That ball hit another trigger that released a balloon which fell until it hit a shelf that I had balanced on a huge nail from my dad's garage. The shelf would tip over, dropping a big magnet that would fall and hit another shelf that would rise up. That shelf had a string tied to it and the other end of the string was tied to my BB gun trigger. The BB gun would fire and hit another balloon I had filled with water. Eventually, it came down to a bucket filled with grape Kool-aid hanging over my door.
Revenge can really be complicated.
I spent hours setting everything up.
When I finally had everything in place I brought my friend over. I told him to stand outside my door while I set up his "surprise." Finally, everything was ready and I told him to come on in.
Knowing something was up, instead of slowly opening the door like he was supposed to, he flung it open. Which hit a shelf and caused an unexpected series of chain reactions that set everything off at one time. The worst part was the magnet hit my BB gun causing it to fall over, which just so happened to be aimed right at my face. When it went off, water went everywhere, stuff was falling off my walls, things were being knocked over and the bucket of grape Kool-aid splashed against my wall. (Making a stain that would not come out.)
Oh. And a BB gun shot me in the face. Which gave me a couple more stitches.
The next day (after a trip to the hospital and a good spanking) my friend was sitting in my room looking at the ruins of my revenge machine. Looking at the stains on the carpet and then at the stitches on my face he said, "It was a good idea. But maybe we should call it even."
The truce lasted all of a week until the great Saran Wrap incident. But we never planned intricate revenge on each other again.
Sometimes we twist the Golden Rule that Jesus gave us in Matthew 7:12 to suit our own purposes.
Instead of do unto others actions we would like, it becomes do to others what they want to do to us. But do it first. Living a life of spirituality leaves no room for revenge. Small or large. Jesus came to set us free and with that freedom comes a new sense of what life is about. And instead of revenge, we should seek ways to offer forgiveness.
It's a lot less complicated.
Let us pray.
PASTOR TROY CONRAD IS MINISTER OF THE FARMINGTON UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. EMAIL: [email protected].
Religion on 09/14/2016