Learn Your Lessons

21 Apr

“If the lessons of history teach us anything it is that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.” ~ Anonymous

When it comes right down to it, we are lousy lesson learners, are we not? We would rather be teaching the lessons than learning the lessons. Oftentimes, when others are attempting to teach us lessons, we are looking at ways to make it better or alternative ways of doing whatever it is being taught.

I had a friend like that. She fancied herself a great cook. Whenever she had something that she liked, she would ask for the recipe. Then, she would attempt to make it at home. She often complained because the food never tasted as good as it did where she had it. Of course, I would ask the question: “What ingredients did you change?”

I always got “the lecture” about how she would substitute ingredients because some she may not have had, others because they would “work better” than the original ingredients, et cetera. In short, she would change the recipe, sometimes so radically, that there was no way in God’s green earth that she would be able to duplicate the meal.

If history tells us anything, it is that God is attempting to teach us what we need to know to draw closer to Him and how to be better people. However, we often reject His recipe and, instead, substitute other ingredients.

If we want to be more holy and closer to God, we have to do what God has instructed. We cannot look at things like the Ten Commandments and accept them as Ten Suggestions. We cannot pick and choose the virtues we are going to embrace. We cannot decide that some people are important and other people do not matter.

We cannot be our own God. We either accept what God has asked of us or we reject it. There is no in between.

FAITH ACTION: Be patient with God today and allow Him to teach you the lessons that you need to learn in order to live, more completely, as His disciple.