You're Going the Wrong Way!

Every third Thursday of the month the skating rink in our town has a "Homeschooler's Night." Most of the homeschoolers that come out are Christians, so we get to play our own Southern Gospel Music instead of that contemporary stuff. It is always a lot of clean fun!

This past month a family with six kids, who had just started coming, brought their cousins who we happen to know. As I was skating with one of the girls we began to talk about the way we have always skated. Everyone goes around the rink counter-clock-wise, for the whole night. By the time it's time to leave you will have blisters on that one side of your foot. We both agreed that we should skate the opposite way half of the night.

Not long after that her brother and cousin started going the opposite way! So what did we do? We followed them! The first thing I noticed was how hard it was to skate that way. I found out that not only am I right handed, but right footed as well!

Soon others started to follow us. The first ones to do so were our own brothers and sisters, naturally. After a while everyone started going the wrong way. Obviously some of the kids must have turned around because the lady that was supervising told us that we all had to skate the same way. That was the end of our little fun.

Later I started thinking about how we do this very thing in life all the time. We follow the crowd in the wrong direction. Everybody else is doing it, so why shouldn't we? A lot of times it's not the sinners that we are following, just like we weren't following strangers at the skating rink. They were our friends and family! Even Christians can lead us in the wrong direction. Christians can convince us that contemporary music is okay. They can make us believe that wearing skirts a little above the knee or tight shirts isn't that wrong. Christians are the ones who may lead us to back down on our disciplinary beliefs.

Going with the flow can often be easy, but if we know it is wrong it should bother our conscience, making it hard to continue in this path just like it was hard skating clock-wise. But if we don't listen the the Holy Ghost telling us to turn around, others will start to follow us . . . most likely those closest to us.

But oh, how easy it is to be going the right way once we have turned around! The actual turning around may not be easy, but once we have, the peace of mind and the joy of knowing you are in God's will is so rewarding. May we all strive to follow Christ . . . not the crowd.