Good Intentions, Bad Results

Have you ever acted with good intentions, but the results were not what you expected?  My brother and I, while in our junior high or early high school years, had such an experience.

It was a “southern holiday” in Collierville.  We had snow and ice, and schools were closed.  Most people stayed home that day, rather than venture out onto the icy roads.  I don’t recall if my Dad was planning to go to work later, or why we decided to do this.  There was, what seemed to be, about an inch of ice covering my Dad’s pickup truck in the driveway, and we decided it would be a good idea to clear the ice off the windshield.  We thought about pouring scalding hot water over the windshield, but decided against it.  The sudden change in temperature might crack the windshield.  It was a thick layer of ice, so we had a great idea.  We would break-up the ice with something, and chip it off.  So we found a broom and took turns smacking away at the ice with the end of the broom handle to break it up.  Once it was all broken, we could then just chip it away.

We took great pleasure in pounding on the ice, and we knew our efforts would be appreciated.  But when we started removing the broken ice from the windshield, the cracks didn’t go away.  There were cracks all over the windshield!  It looked as though the truck had been driven under a pile of falling rocks, and the windshield didn’t survive. 

We were ready for execution. Or worse yet, we knew we were going to have to pay for the damaged windshield.  But my Dad is a patient man.  He just had this certain look that said, “Do either of you have a brain?”  He did ask us what we were thinking when we did this, but that was it.  No punishment, no execution, and we didn’t have to pay for it.  I think Dad understood our intentions.

I Samuel 16:7:  “…For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”  ESV