There’s this joke about a man who constantly complained that wherever he touched his body, it really hurt.
After hearing this day after day, his wife persuaded him to make an appointment with their family doctor.
Once there, the man explained to the doctor that wherever he touched his body, it really hurt.
He said, “If I touch here, it hurts, if I touch my arm, it hurts, if I touch my foot, if I . . . ”
The doctor gave him a complete physical examination, and then his diagnosis.
“Your finger is broken.”
Now, you would have to be pretty thick not to know that the pain was in the prodding part, rather than in the parts prodded. But who hasn’t done some backward thinking at one time or another?
Recently, I read a biography of a man famous for developing the concept of Lateral Thinking-meaning, thinking sideways, and not just A + B + C, and so on. There are times when, to move forward, we sometimes need to think sideways-be open to intuitive thoughts and ideas, not only logical, sequential ones.
The apostle Peter discovered that God is sometimes unpredictable in the way He does things. Put yourself in Peter’s place, as he preaches to the household of Cornelius. The last thing Peter expects is that God will give this Roman centurion and his family and friends the gift of the Holy Spirit. But even in the unlikely event of that happening, it would have to be in the Pentecostal order-“Repent, be baptised, receive.” (A + B + C) But the Holy Spirit fills all who are in the house first (although they must have had repentant hearts), So Peter baptises them after the event. (A? + C + B). “Who was I to refuse them baptism, when God had filled them?” he was later to say, following a “Please Explain” from Head Office at Jerusalem.
God set Time in motion, but twice slowed it down, in response to prayer. (Joshua 10 & 2 Kings 20) When you own the house, rearranging the furniture is no problem! John the Baptist never drank wine; Jesus not only drank it-once he actually supplied it! That frustrated those who couldn’t join the dots. When they played a religious tune, Jesus refused to dance; when they put on long faces, Jesus smiled. Paul warned us not to let the world mould us into its shape-“Don’t conform-be transformed-renew your minds.” (Romans 12)
We think logically, and that’s good, but the Holy Spirit will often lead us intuitively. Let’s be open to that. We can think ACB as well as ABC. We can think sideways as we move forward-bearing in mind that nobody ever got ahead by thinking backwards.