pieces and ponderings

So I just finished reading the book of Joshua recently and I’ve been thinking about warnings because the last couple of chapters in Joshua have some pretty stiff warnings for God’s people, Israel.

Joshua had followed God’s instructions throughout his life. He had been careful to obey God’s commands and Joshua wanted the Israelites to continue following God’s commands. He warned them of dire consequences that would result if they turned away from the LORD and embraced the idol worship of the pagans around them: “But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them, then you may be sure that the LORD your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the LORD your God has given you.” (Joshua 23:12-13)

The warning was clear, the consequences were clear…and they weren’t good consequences.  Sometimes we might receive a warning and know that there might be harmful or bad consequences that could result from our decisions, but we might not know the extent of the harm that could come.

One day this past summer my family had been out somewhere and returned home in the evening, after dark.  We must have been in two vehicles because my husband and our sons got home before I did.  I remember walking into our garage and seeing my husband and our fourth born child looking around the garage.  My son asked me to close the garage door and I asked them what they were doing.

“Dad is trying to catch a stray cat,” my son informed me.

My first thought was that this might not be a good idea.  We have a cat and our cat’s food dish was located in the garage and evidently a stray cat, actually a wild cat, had come into our garage and helped himself or herself to our cat’s food.  When my husband and son had arrived home, they had stumbled onto the cat eating and they decided to try and catch the cat.

Now, my husband is an intelligent man.  He is also an animal lover and likes cats in particular.  While my son had been explaining to me what was going on in our garage, my husband had cornered the wild cat in a closet in the garage.  I was hearing very strange and terrible sounding cat noises coming from the closet.  My son continued to ask me to close the garage door, so the cat could not escape.

My second thought on this matter was much like my first, “This is not a good idea.”

I called to my husband and he assured me that he would be careful…more low pitched, growling cat noises came from the closet.  I closed the garage door after warning my husband again that this didn’t seem to me to be the best of ideas.  I left the two cat wranglers in the garage and went inside.

My husband and son came inside after a little while and told me that they had decided to let the cat go.

The next day, I was headed into town and my husband called from work and asked if I could pick up a prescription at our pharmacy for him.  I wondered what kind of prescription he needed, but didn’t ask when he called.  He informed me when I took the antibiotic to him at his office that he had stopped in to see our family doctor that morning on his way to work.  Then he showed me a very red and swollen and warm-to-the-touch index finger, the result of a cat bite from a wild stray cat which was trying to get past the crazy man that had him cornered in a garage closet.

The cat had not only bitten my husband’s finger, but had bitten through work gloves that my husband had been wearing and still left a deep puncture wound in my husband’s finger.

I just looked at my husband with his boyish, “Oops” grin AND I reminded him that he is a grown man who should know better than to corner crazed wild stray cats, which are emitting low-sounding growly noises.

After one round of antibiotics, my husband’s finger was still red and swollen. He was prescribed more antibiotics and then he was sent to a hand specialist at the orthopedic clinic.

My husband would wind up having numerous appointments with the hand specialist at the orthopedic clinic.  He took three rounds of antibiotics.  He received two different steroid injections from the hand specialist at the orthopedic clinic and they talked about possible surgery if the inflammation didn’t go down.

Thankfully, the second steroid shot seemed to help enough that my husband decided not to forego the surgical procedure.

Like I said, my husband is an intelligent man; he knew some of the risks involved in trying to catch a wild cat, but evidently he didn’t know ALL of the risks involved in trying to catch a wild cat.  He went against the warnings of his wife AND  his own common sense and unfortunately had to suffer the consequences of a wild cat’s fury.

Warnings are good.  Warnings have a purpose.  Joshua gave the Israelites warnings because he cared about them. God gave the Israelites warnings because He cared about them.  God gives us warnings also…because He cares about us.  And most of the time, probably ALL of the time,  it is just a good and wise idea to heed the warnings.