I Didn't do it on Purpose

When I was eight years old and in the third grade, I walked home from school for lunch each day - it was about a mile. I quickly ate lunch so I would have a few minutes to play before having to head back to school. One day I went out in the back yard to play with my dog. I took the dog’s leash and started spinning it around until it made a whistling sound. It was really whipping. My mother called me and said it was time to walk back to school so I stopped spinning the leash. It snapped around and the metal hook squarely hit and split my front top tooth. I intuitively caught the pieces and ran into the house. I was driven to the office of Dr. Stillwell, our family dentist. With tears running down my cheeks, I held out the pieces to him and said, “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
That was my favorite excuse every time I did something stupid. And it was true. To this day I'm still missing the back half of my front tooth and I want you to know that I didn’t do it on purpose.
Life is all about purpose. Some things we do on purpose and some things we don’t. The practical question for us as Christians isn’t about what we didn’t do on purpose. The practical question is what we did do on purpose. Let us think through every day how we can purposefully, thoughtfully, intentionally and deliberately live our lives to please and honor God.

Related Scripture: Romans 12

© 2007 Leith Anderson