Unsafe Distances

We had a simple plan a couple of nights ago. After eating dinner, Karen and I decided to tramp out into a portion of our woods that we seldom visit to retrieve an old tire that we could use to build a "football toss" carnival style game. We still have a half dozen or so tires that had been left there by the previous land owner and we decided to utilize one.

Little did we realize what we were about to experience. I was on point and Karen was about 20 feet behind me as I entered the brush/tree line. All of a sudden I heard Karen yell that something had bitten her. My mind instantly interpreted that as her having been bitten by a venomous snake. I turned to go back to help her and noticed that she was holding her hand/arm. At that point, I didn't have time to even re-evaluate what had just happened. I felt the first pains on my body and I looked around and realized that I was being swarmed by dozens of black and white bald-faced hornets. Without realizing it, I had stepped up next to their nest and the bald-faced hornets are known to be more aggressive than other hornets, wasps or bees. They can each sting multiple times and will chase those that they feel are a danger to their nests long distances to protect it. 

Karen took off running towards the house and I was right behind her. We were still a couple hundred feet from the house when Karen fell face first to the ground. As I reached her to pick her up, I still had a couple of hornets stuck in my clothes. I killed those hornets, helped Karen up and we raced up to our barn. Since we were quite a distance from the hornets by then, they had abandoned their attack and we were now able to evaluate our injuries. Karen had one sting, a skinned up left knee, right thigh and right arm. I had eight stings, all of which were on the right side of my body, all of which were below the waist except for one sting on my lower right back. We then went into the house, applied "after bite" to our stings (which helps relieve some of the discomfort and actually works) and Karen cleaned her wounds. Not wanting to give up too easily, Karen and I went out to the barn to build the game frame anyway. As we were retrieving the lumber from our lumber stack, God allowed us to see a tire that we had all but forgotten about. It was one that was out in the woods before but I had brought up to the house to dispose of. We used it instead!

Because I don't believe that God allows bad things to happen to people for no reason, I asked him last night what was the purpose for all of this taking place. The simple lesson that I learned from this, that could be applied in a spiritual way, is that sometimes bad things happen to good people just because they allow themselves to get too close to a bad situation. They may not even do it intentionally, but they do it none-the-less. Sometimes people are be-bopping along and not paying attention to lurking dangers and then get caught unaware when something bad happens.  They may not really be doing anything wrong, but close proximity is enough for them to get stung. In some applications of this principle, close proximity may not even be a physical thing, but an emotional thing or even the appearance of impropriety.