P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

ADJUSTING YOUR MIRRORS

One of the toughest things in the world to do is to explain why you messed up, why you didn’t get a certain job done. Something was really important — and you realize that now! — but back when it happened, you didn’t take it seriously . . . and it sounds so lame as you try to explain that to your boss or to the jury or the Senate Investigative Committee.

These days, if you take a two-week ride on a cruise ship, I understand it’s fairly easy to communicate ship-to-shore with international satellite cell phone service, e-mail, pagers, etc. But I think back to the days when everyone on board had to receive messages from home through that little radio shack where an overworked officer down in the bowels of the ship had to decipher the dit-dah-dit-dah of Morse code, write it down for you, and have a messenger take it up to your cabin. A man named John George Phillips worked hard and held the position of first operator for a ship. Radio traffic was exceptionally busy one night, and the ship was relaying the dits and the dahs from a land-based “server” — they probably didn’t describe them like that back then — at a place called Cape Race. People wanted to say hello to their loved ones; businessmen had to get the latest stock quotes. And when another ship out there on the high seas tried to break through the radio clutter with an official message, Mr. Phillips angrily snapped off a nasty “dot-dot-dot dot-dot-dot-dot dot-dot-dash dash, dot-dot-dash dot-dash-dash-dot.” In other words, “Shut up!” In fact, his word-for-word Morse code message read: “Shut up! Shut up! I am busy; I am working Cape Race!”

Now, a message from another ship might be kind of important, and it was probably a blind spot for this impatient John George Phillips to not recognize that fact. But it would be rather difficult for him to go back later and apologize to his employer, the White Star Line, for his error in judgment. He couldn’t get back on the radio and apologize that he snapped at the radio operator on the Californian about bugging him with an ice warning. And it would be very difficult, in fact, impossible, for him to say he was sorry to the 1500-plus people who joined him in drowning when the unsinkable ship Titanic plunged beneath the waves that cold April night in the year 1912.

We’ve been using as a kind of theme text or ice warning a verse in Psalm 19, and let me share it with you from the good old Living Bible paraphrase by Kenneth Taylor. Notice:

“How can I ever know what sins are lurking in my heart?” King David writes. Another paraphrase actually says “blind spot.” “Cleanse me,” he prays, “from these hidden faults.”

We often think of “hidden faults” or “secret sins” as the ones WE try to hide from other people. King David was an unfortunate genius at doing that too. But what he’s really lamenting here are the secret sins that are even secret to US! They’re in there, and we don’t know it. We have this tendency toward anger, or dishonesty, or — in this Titanic radio operator’s case — impatience . . . and we’re not even aware that we’re steaming toward a rendezvous with the ice.

We mentioned back on Monday a certain very expensive sports automobile that the car-and-driver magazines warn us has a substantial blind spot. So let me ask the question right here: how do we overcome a blind spot? Whether you’re down at the Lamborghini dealership or cruising the highway of eternal life? What do you do when you know there’s a spot of freeway asphalt that you can’t see from your position?

A good driver would give two answers right away. First of all, use those mirrors. I think every major automaker in the world now has three mirrors standard. Your rear view mirror and now side mirrors both right and left. And if you dutifully look in all three, blind spots do at least shrink up and get smaller.

President Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, has become well-known for his pithy sayings, the one-liners he and his staff members try to follow in life. You’ve probably seen some of them on the Internet. But as a man who has served in Washington for Mr. Bush 43 and also Mr. Bush 41, he wisely says this:

“Visit with your predecessors from previous administrations. They know the ropes and can help you see around some corners.” And now notice this great advice: “Try to make ORIGINAL mistakes, rather than needlessly repeating theirs.”

We’ve often commented here at the Voice of Prophecy: “If you keep doing things the way you’ve always done them, you better settle in and expect the same results you’ve always had.” Of course, the parallel saying to the one about making new mistakes is the one where a boss lamented about his underling: “This guy never makes the same mistake twice, but I think he’s made all of them once now!”

But friend, looking in the rear view mirror of our spiritual life would mean to consider our past. Did we spend a lot of time three years ago ignoring our feeding of our soul? Skipping our Bible reading and sleeping in on the weekends, absenting ourselves from church? All right . . . so we already KNOW that such a life leads to spiritual defeat. We already proved that three years ago. Why go through it again? When we retaliate with anger against our spouse or our kids, when we keep track of wrongdoing, when we pay back evil for evil — we and many others in God’s family have already demonstrated the utter failure of those ways of living. We already know. A glance in the rear view mirror will show us those demons immediately.

By the way, the Bible actually shouts out this very “rear view mirror” concept. Did you know that? The Apostle Paul was probably the main “driving instructor” in the whole New Testament, and in his first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 10, he tells us this very thing. In fact, chapter 10 in the New International Version is titled: “Warnings From Israel’s History.” He talks about the apostasy of ancient Israel, how they ended up dying in the wilderness because of their sins and rebellion. Then in verse six, he essentially asks: “Hey, do you think all this stuff is in the Bible for nothing? How do you think these sad stories got in here?” Notice his exact warning:

“Now these things occurred as examples,” he writes, “to keep us from setting OUR hearts on evil things as they did.” Like Rumsfeld says, “Don’t make your parents’ mistakes! If you have to make any at all, make some new ones of your own.” Paul continues: “Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: ‘The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry.’ We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did — and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. We should not test the Lord, as some of them did — and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did — and were killed by the destroying angel.”

That’s a list of horrors, isn’t it? And Paul points a finger at us and says: “Be smart. Just a glance in the mirror will tell you that these are all killers: idolatry, adultery, presuming on God’s good graces, grumbling. Don’t even go there.” In fact, he comes right back to the “mirror” concept again in verse 11:

“These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings FOR US, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.”

I love the new Message paraphrase here; it’s so blunt and perfect for this 21st century. Here it is:

“These are all warning markers — DANGER! — in our history books, written down so that we don’t repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel — they at the beginning, we at the end — and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were.” And then Paul adds: “Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it’s useless. Cultivate God-confidence.”

Isn’t that good? And, by the way, awfully close to home? But really, so many blind spots just plain don’t have to be. So, number one, look in those spiritual mirrors. And number two: you may need to adjust those mirrors. Ever done that in a rental car, or after your kid took the family Camry out for the weekend? And sometimes we need to make spiritual adjustments in how we look, how we read the Bible, how often or in what spirit we read it. How we hear a sermon at church — inviting its message to apply to US instead of to our fellow drivers two pews over.

We probably remember how our drivers ed teachers — and I think that guy from the DMV insisted on it too — had us move our seat up just right and adjust the mirrors BEFORE we even switched on the engine. First thing in the morning, when we get out of bed, it might not be a bad idea there too. Instead of hitting the ground running, hit the floor on your knees.