Old Faithful

Our house has an alarm system. I've heard it work before when I forgot to turn it off after returning home at the end of the day. It's a loud, car horn-honking kind of sound. But other than that, I really haven't heard it. Except...About six months (or more) ago, it started making this annoying beep. Just a short, shrill, high pitched beep. Once every thirty-five seconds or so. It was the Old Faithful of burglar alarms. Early on, I decided this house alarm had a bad battery and you could hear the sound coming from this one spot. Although we couldn't really pinpoint it to that very spot. It was up in the upper corner of the kitchen, a small rectangular shaped, plastic motion detector that had a red light that would come on when anyone walked by.
I've climbed up on the counter, risking my knees trying to get the battery out of this burglar alarm. But to no avail. My wife would stand in the middle of the kitchen and say, "Jim, that's not coming from up there. It's coming from behind the refrigerator. I'm sorry, what do women know about burglar alarms, especially ones with motion detectors. After all, this is a man's world and we are the ones that understand the technical equipment around the house. All the while Old Faithful continued to beep. In fact, late at night...in the quiet hours...when you woke up to the silence of the dark....beep. Every thirty-five seconds.
Now frankly, we had kind of gotten use to the incessant beep. It wasn't constant, just consistent. But people could hear it on the phone when they would call us. "What's that sound I hear?" "Oh, that's just Old Faithful." But the kicker came the other night. My son was playing on his Play Station, a storm had just come through plummeting our temperatures from 100+ to the 60s. So my wife opened our doors to let some cool, fresh air in. Now the beep got annoying. It beeped incessantly for at least 10 seconds. Well, being the man that I am, I sprung into action. Obviously my wife didn't know that leaving the doors wide open left us vunerable to attack and the burglar alarm was letting us know. I closed the doors and secured them tightly and we went back to Old Faithful. However, this time was a little different. Every thirty-five seconds it would beep that familiar short beep. Five times it would return to "normal." Then it would let out one long ten second beep. Followed by a three or four second beep. Then back to Old Faithful. Through the night it followed the pattern. At 4:00 am it was still five short, one long, one medium. I was at the end of my technological wit. (Short trip)
The next morning, I received a call from my wife. "I think I have stopped the beeping sound." All right! Finally she has seen the light and decided to confessing that she messed up the burglar alarm. She was cleaning off a cabinet by the refrigerator and behind a box that held a serving dish was a smoke alarm. When she took out the battery, Old Faithful was done.
How many of us try to place blame on everything and everyone else. "The reason the terrorists have attacked us is because of the policies of the West." How about the reason the terrorists attacked was because they were evil people. "He made me do!" We do pretty much what we want to do. We have forgotten personal responsibility. Our court system is based on that (so-called) principle. Many times our church life is based on the same. We wouldn't have so much of a problem with ___________ (fill in the blank) if old brother so and so would just do it my way. Let's quit that. Let's look at our own hearts. Let's quit the blame game. And let's find the real source of the problem. Once we do that, we can be led to the real Solution. Have a great day. JW

P.S. By the way, this is my last blog for a little more than a week. It's time for Green Valley Bible Camp. See you in a little more than a week.