Abraham::Sin Again

When I was a kid I had this weird thing about eating lunches at school. I couldn't do it. The way my lunch sat in my bag it almost always got smashed, the cheese got soft and melty or one side of the sandwich got wet from something cold in the lunch bag. Those were all deal breakers for me and then the bad sandwich experiences got in my head and I couldn't trust a normal looking sandwich. 

This became a thing. 

Sandwiches were eventually ruled out so my Mom got more and more creative and I had a stretch of bringing bean dip and tortilla chips to school for lunch. That wasn't a real sustainable lunch choice so my Mom finally caved and brought in the big guns. 

We purchased Lunchables. 

This was a game changer and launched me into a whole new lunch experience. Lunchables were the caviar and champagne of school lunches and while I was consistently reminded that they cost too much for us, it was a decision borne out of desperation and fears that I would starve otherwise. 

Ultimately even this plan failed. I couldn't keep doing Lunchables everyday, but the idea of making my Mom's life more difficult by shooting down yet another idea was too to bear. So I did what any enterprising kid would do. I started hiding them under my bed. 
(If you're worried about decaying food in my room, apparently you aren't familiar with the shelf life of a Lunchable. They will outlive us all) 

I didn't want to be pretending to eat and hiding the old Lunchables, but I felt stuck in a hopeless situation. Every time I did it I felt guilty for this misuse of my family's money, but I just couldn't stop doing it. 

This did not end well. My Mom found my preteen hoarders collection and I was busted. I was forced to do what many  kids in Christian families do when they break their parent's trust. I wrote a paper on dishonesty using the Bible as my textbook. 

I share that story because it helps me see the ways that we devise our own impractical solutions to issues that we face. These solutions lead us down a limited path that doesn't show much foresight, and we feel stuck in a problem that started as the answer to our original problem. 

This Sunday we'll be looking at the story of Abraham and uncovering some insights into patterns of harmful behavior and the solutions that we sometimes talk ourselves into. I hope you'll join us and leave feeling ready to face your week without stuffing Lunchables under your bed ;)