Prevention is better than cure. Or…?

Suppose… a fire breaks out in your house now(!) What are you doing?

• You run to the fire extinguisher and try to save what can be saved.
• You run right out the door and let the place burn down
• You are looking for the book “how do I prevent a fire?”
• You wonder when your chimney was last swept.

OK, that was a simple question right? Now a bit more difficult…

Suppose… your house burns down once again… this is not the first time, but already the third time that your house burns to the ground…. What are you doing?

• You run to the fire extinguisher and try to save what can be saved.
• You run right out the door and let the place burn down.
• You are looking for the book “how do I prevent a fire?”
• You wonder when your chimney was last swept.

If all goes well, your answer to the second question will be different. In both cases, it was a fire, but the approach is different.

Suppose… there is a pyromaniac in your village… then you can continue to put out the fire and keep running, but as long as that pyromaniac is not caught, things will continue to go wrong.

Perhaps it is not a pyromaniac, but it is the central heating boiler that was not cleaned periodically, the chimney that was not swept, the … you name it. Can you prevent everything in life? Well, not that either, but it is good to wonder if you are doing the right thing when the “building” goes up in flames for the 10th time… Once can be an incident, the world is not perfect and mistakes we all make. But 10x? Then there really is a problem. And if you don’t address that problem… things will keep going wrong.

And now to the present day. How is your spiritual house? The world is not a perfect place, we know that from experience. Things will go wrong, the bible is very clear about that:

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

John 16:33

And now the exciting question for today… what do you do about prevention? Or do you only think of the fire extinguisher (God, Jesus, bible etc. etc.) when things go wrong? This reminds me of the following bible verse:

A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.

Proverbs 22:3

How about you? Do you just go on and on and on… or not… and do you regularly check the manual to see what can be improved, how you can prevent things, go to an “anti-fire specialist” for good advice….

How about you? Do you go on and on and on… or not… and study the bible what you could and should do differently, how to avoid things, do you go to God for good advice…. in prayer. Every day…

Prevention is better than cure. Are we after the pyromaniac, or do you keep running with a fire extinguisher every time again and again..….? An exiting question…