Bad Endings
Do not be overly wicked, nor be foolish: Why should you die before your time? – Ecclesiastes 7:17 NKJV.
And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment. – Hebrews 9:27 NKJV.
Evgeniy Tankov, a 35-year-old attorney, is in trouble and could spend the next ten years in prison. Evgeniy is in trouble with the judge in a Kazakhstan inheritance case because things were not going well for his client. You have to wonder how the attorney for a client in a civil case ends up facing those many years in prison? Here’s what he did, he approaches the judge and says, “Let’s not hang about arguing the law here, let’s decide this with flyswatters.” Evgeniy then holds up a flyswatter and proceeds to slap the judge with it three times. The judge does nothing at first until the opposing attorney joins the fight by punching Evgeniy. That is when the judge leaves the bench and helps to wrestle Evgeniy to the floor. (Orange 07.18.14)
There are some things that you just know are going to end badly! Here is an example, don’t ever hit the judge with a flyswatter! Here are a few of the foolish things I have done that ended badly. Just because on the Dukes of Hazzard and other TV shows and movies drivers can jump their cars over ditches and other things…does not mean that you can. It really was a small ditch, four, five, six feet wide and my car did jump the ditch…but it shoved the fan through the radiator and bent the frame. That car seemed to have a problem with that, because when I drove it off a dead end it pushed the fan through the radiator and bent the frame that time too. Those events occurred my senior year in High School. Another foolish thing that will end badly is having a blowtorch fight, at least it ended badly for me because the back of my hand was burned. I think that happened my junior year in High School, and yes, I probably did something equally foolish every year, although thankfully I’ve been able to blot most of them out of my memory.
Having fools as friends who do foolish things can cause problems for you too. My freshman year in college one night I walked with my roommate and another guy downtown. Before I knew what they were doing, they had pulled down some Halloween decorations that were on a business building. I had not walked over to the store with them for some reason, but it didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do at that point. A police car came zooming into the parking lot, and suddenly I was on the run from a crime I didn’t commit. It is not much fun hiding under cars and climbing over fences. We escaped without a really bad ending, and I learned a lesson, which I think maybe my friends learned too!
There does appear to be an appointed time for us to die as it says in Hebrews 9:27, “as it is appointed for men to die once.” However, Ecclesiastes 7:17 warns that we can die before that time if we act foolishly. Jump off the top of a ten-story building and it is likely that you will die before your time. Step in front of a train traveling 60 miles an hour, and it is likely that you will die before your time. To guard our lives against foolish actions, let us continually seek the wisdom of God. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him (James 1:5).”
(Don’t be a fool and die before your time.)