Pay Attention!
When Sam Wilson was a little boy, he loved to play in the streams where he lived in southern Virginia. His favorite pastime was watching the minnows and crawdads.
Sam had just completed high school when he joined the Army. After having served three years and becoming an officer, Sam joined the Offices of Strategic Services (OSS) and volunteered to be part of an elite unit, which operated behind enemy lines in Burma during WWII. As a young lieutenant, there was one occasion where he stepped into a small stream in Burma and suddenly his mind drifted back to his days as a boy in Virginia, watching the minnows and crawdads.
For a brief moment in time, Sam wasn’t immersed in a war. That moment was interrupted when he noticed enemy footprints in a sandbar. His mind raced back and forth between the footprints and the minnows in the stream. Suddenly he noticed that one of the footprints was rapidly filling up with water. That meant that the enemy solider had just stepped off that sandbar and was probably in the jungle watching Sam at that very moment.
Quickly, Sam maneuvered his hands to act like he had a bunch of troops with him and then slowly he faded off into the jungle to live and fight another day. The moral of this story is quite simple. Certainly take time to enjoy God’s creation, praise Him for it, but, do not drop your guard! We are instructed in 1 Peter 5:8 (Amplified):
“Be well balanced (temperate, sober of mind), be vigilant and cautious at all times; for that enemy of yours, the devil, roams around like a lion roaring [in fierce hunger], seeking someone to seize upon and devour.”
As Christians, we are either moving forward toward Christ or we are moving away from Him. There is no middle ground and there is no stopping and resting in our walk with the Lord. We must stay vigilant and pay attention to what is happening around us, always aware that Satan is constantly seeking ways to destroy our faith.
