Proverbs 7
7 And I saw among the naive,
And discerned among the youths
A young man lacking sense,
Have you ever been in a car accident? I have. The last one, a few years back, a guy totaled my car and aggravated some back issues I have. Funniest one: Jamie and I are at a grocery store in Princeton WV. At the time we had a silver Honda Civic. That thing was a car crash magnet (just wait, you’ll see). It was like it had an invisibility cloak. Nobody could see this car. I should have sold it to DARPA and given them a leg up on their invisibility camouflage. Anyway, we’re sitting in the car, in the parking lot, patiently waiting for this car to go by so we can pull out. Well, the car slowly comes at us. I’m thinking, “they’ll see us and stop, surely they can’t be thinking this space is empty.” Wrong. The car keeps coming, keeps coming...Bam! Runs right into us. I couldn’t believe it. We got out, and Jamie will back me up on this, an old lady gets out of the car and tells us, “I thought you were my niece.” Right, cause that makes sense. So we’re trying to figure out if the lady bumped her head or something at that point. Then, one of the old lady’s family members showed up and encouraged us to call the cops, “She’s crazy, she shouldn’t be driving. You should definitely call the cops.” I thought my family was tough. At least none of the Lopez clan have ever tried to run me down in a grocery store parking lot. Yet. True story.
Reading this passage today, I thought, “Man, Solomon is kind of a jerk. He saw this whole thing go down and didn’t yell out to this idiot and convince him to stop or impart some wisdom to keep him from evil. He’s Solomon for Pete’s sake! He saw this car wreck happen and didn’t do anything to stop it.” It would have been nice if we realized what was happening with the old lady and her niece and somehow got out of the way or stopped her. It would have been nice if someone had seen the crash conditions forming that wrecked my car and stopped me from leaving the house when I did or got the other guy off his phone so he would pay attention and not rear end me. It would have been nice, if someone would have stepped in a bunch of times and prevented catastrophe before it happened.
I don’t know if Solomon really saw this incident go down; I don’t know if he was really so close he could hear their conversation. I do know that I saw someone going down a wrong path, and I didn’t do anything either. I'm sure it didn't start out overtly wrong. But things like this tend to take on a life of their own and a lot of people got hurt in the aftermath. A family split up. Maybe the friend wouldn’t have listened. Maybe they would have called me a jerk and told me to mind my own business. But, maybe they would have listened and a lot of pain and heartbreak been avoided. So, when I first read this, it was, “Solomon, you jerk!” Then it was, “Donnie, you jerk, you did the same thing!”
There are definitely some things in my past where I wish someone would have stepped in, yelled at me, thrown mustard at me, anything to get my attention and explain what the consequences of my actions would be if I followed through. Maybe Solomon felt the same way after the fact and wasn’t going to make the same mistake with his son. Maybe he kept quiet once, and saw what happened, and was determined to speak up next time. A lot can depend on us speaking up. I'm not talking about speaking up self righteously, or condescendingly. If you see a wreck about to occur, take a chance and say something in love. If God’s given you the ability to get those ‘Spidey Sense’ tingles of what is really going down: SAY SOMETHING. Maybe they’ll listen. Maybe they won’t. I don’t know. But give them a chance. If you see me doing something stupid, or you get a weird vibe about it, let me know. No really, let me know. I’ll do the same for you. And yes, I’ll probably use the phrase ‘Spidey Sense.’
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