Galatians 6:5 (ESV)
For each will have to bear his own load.
A mother heard the family cat yowl in pain. She knew
where to look – she looked for her son, Mike. "Stop pulling the cat's
tail, Michael!" She chided.
"I'm not pulling his tail," the boy retorted.
"I'm just standing on it. He's doing the pulling."
He, of course, is no different than any of us. Often, our
first impulse is to blame someone or something else for problems. It's the
cat's fault. Or the school's fault. Or my parents' fault.
I once heard a story of a 40-year-old woman who was
jogging in a U. S. state park when she was attacked and killed by a mountain
lion. Her family immediately filed suit against the state because of its
"failure to manage the mountain lion population" and because it
didn't "react to reports of cougar activity in the area by posting warning
signs."
But an interesting thing happened. Her distraught husband
felt it was wrong to blame the state or anyone else for his wife's death, even
though he stood to possibly win a small fortune. Against her family's wishes,
he dropped the law suit. "Barbara and I have always taken responsibility
for our own actions," he explained. "Barbara chose to run in the wild
and, on a very long shot, she did not come back. This is not the fault of the
state, and people should take responsibility for themselves."
He no doubt believes that the Blame Game" is a
no-win in the long run. He seems like a person who would rather spend time
fixing what's broken than fixing the blame for it on someone else.
This isn't about law suits – it's more about whether we
are essentially victims of life or whether we are powerful and responsible
people. An important step in gaining mastery over our life is to resist the
urge to make something or someone else responsible. Like novelist J. K. Rowling
(of Harry Potter fame) said to graduating Harvard students, "There is an
expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction;
the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with
you." Certainly background and circumstances have influenced who we are,
but who is responsible for the person we become?
An important decision we can all make is to resist
playing the Blame Game. The day we realized that we are in charge of how we will
approach problems in our life, that things will turn out better or worse
because of use and nobody else, that will be the day we will be a happier and
healthier person.
Dear Lord, help us to take responsibility for the things
we do and not blame it on someone else. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
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