I have a friend who has a friend that was following a cattle truck up a long hill. He couldn’t pass the truck because he couldn’t see far enough ahead. The truck stunk and it went slow. He got right up behind it, agitated, about to honk. Suddenly the truck surged ahead and a giant wave of liquid manure splashed all over his hood. He started to really loose his temper than he stopped and said, “Lord, are you trying to teach me something?” “Yes,” he thought he heard the Lord say, “You’re too close.”
Twenty years ago I went deer hunting with a friend. I’m an archer and I’m not much into rifles, but it was a rifle tag. I saw a deer about a hundred yards away. I rested the gun on a stump and tried to see the deer through the scope. I’d never shot a gun with a scope before. I must have been doing something wrong. Finally I could see a fuzzy picture of the deer in the scope (it wasn’t clear at all) and I squeezed the trigger. Bam! Something exploded and knocked me back. I felt something warm trickling down my face. Blood all over my shirt. Can you guess what happened?
My brother did. Two weeks later when he saw me with a crescent scar over at my right eyebrow he laughed and said, “Scope Scar.” 🙂
What’s the lesson? Sometimes we need to back off and get perspective from a distance. If we don’t, we may end up smelly and wounded!