Fool Me Once, But Never Twice

This segment of "Things I Have Learned From My Daughter" was first shared in my December 2006 newsletter.

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 Rachel is a pretty smart little girl.  Once she knows where something is, she remembers the location.  For instance, when she eats, I prepare a sippy cup of juice and one of water for her.  The juice cup has a purple lid. The water cup has a blue one.  She very quickly caught on to which cup contained the more tasty drink. She would refuse the blue cup and demand the purple one.  

One day, I tried an experiment.  I switched the cups to see if she would recognize the trick.  I tried to give her the juice cup (with the blue lid this time) and she refused it, demanding the purple cup.  She drank all the water from the purple cup and only then accepted the juice.   

The look on her face was priceless when she realized she had been tricked.  The next time, I tried a switch again, giving her the water first.  She was not fooled this time.  One sip was enough to let her know that THIS was not what she wanted, even though it was in the cup that was supposed to contain “the good stuff”.  She tossed it aside and demanded the other one.  I could fool her once, but not twice.

How easy it is for us to be fooled by things that look good on the outside, but are not all they are purported to be on the inside.  Our enemy is very clever at packaging things to look inviting, when in fact they are not good for us, or at least not the best.   

He would love to trick us into settling for thrills instead of joy, monetary wealth instead of true riches, excitement instead of contentment, the safety of the known instead of trust in our Father to move outside our comfort zones, lots of shallow relationships instead of a few deep ones, empty ritual instead of true worship.   

Let’s be smarter than that.  Perhaps we have been fooled once into settling for something less than Father’s best.  Let’s not be fooled twice. 

Give your servant therefore an understanding mind…, 

able to discern between good and evil…

1 Kings 3:9