As we were driving home last night my nephew, Jalapeno Hal, told me that sometimes he worries about whether anybody really likes him.  Thinking I was offering words of wisdom, I told him that it was more important for us to worry about what God wants us to do and how we can help other people get to heaven than it is to worry about whether other people like us or not.

There was a prolonged silence from the back of the vehicle.  I thought Jalapeno Hal was taking to heart what I was saying. 

A hesitant voice finally responded from the back seat, “Well Doc, I guess if God wants me to kill people so they can go to heaven, I can do that, but I don’t want to.”

I immediately laughed and explained to Jalapeno Hal that when I said we need to do what we can help other people get to heaven, I didn’t mean that we had to kill other people.  I went on to explain to him that what I meant was that we needed to encourage other people to do what God wants them to do.

Ultimately, I learned a lesson in communication.  Some times what we think we are saying is not what other people are hearing. 

I guess there is more than one way to help other people get to heaven. I just think encouraging them to do what God wants them to do might make it easier for us to get to heaven as well as them.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 10:51 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.