Painting Yourself into a Corner

I have long loved to think about the meaning of old sayings. It intrigues me to consider how they started. Just think about the first man who was painting his floor and doing a wonderful job. Then, he turned around to find that he was in the corner, and he could not get out of the room without walking across his freshly painted floor. What a sick feeling that must have been. What about the person who discovered him standing in the corner, or the one who saw his tracks across the floor? What do you think that person's response was? I think some people who saw that would have had a good laugh. However, if it was a sympathetic loved one, they might have felt very badly for the painter.

Life is much like that. We can paint and paint, not watching where we are going. We are trying to do a good job as far as we can tell. Then, one day we look up only to realize that we are in a corner from which there is no escape without some difficult consequences. What do we do? We try to find some way out, but we fail. The reason we fail is that God wants us to realize that we are not smart enough to direct our lives, and He wants us to see the consequences of not following Him. We need to follow His directions in His Word. That way we will never paint ourselves into a corner. There will always be a way of escape.

Tomorrow, I intend to read Psalms 74-76 and Romans 9:16-33.