Do you need the extra work?

As dead flies cause even a bottle of perfume to stink, so a little foolishness spoils great wisdom and honor.
A wise person chooses the right road; a fool takes the wrong one. You can identify fools just by the way they walk down the street! (Ecclesiastes 10:1-3)

If you ever wondered about some of your decisions in life, you are not alone. I have built stuff, then looked at it a few years later wondering why I put it there or how come the materials haven't held up to the elements. I have said I'd do something, not really thinking through the demand it would place on my body or the time it would take. We all make those 'snap decisions', wondering desperately why we made THAT choice instead of the other. The hope is that we make wise ones, but truth be told, we ALL make some pretty foolish ones on occasion.

What we do with that 'not very wise' choice is important. We can flounder around, looking for ways to escape the foolishness of it all, or we can simply go along for the ride that only a fool would continue. As hard as it is to 'back out' of an unwise decision, it is far wiser to do so as soon as we realize the foolishness of our choice than to continue in the folly. We may lose face, but we won't lose as much as we would lose if we continued down that unwise path. Jesus isn't amazed that we made the wrong choice, but he may be a little bewildered as to why we continue to walk down that path!

Great wisdom doesn't always keep us from wrong choices. As a matter of fact, to know to do good and then not to do it is sin (James 4:17). Great wisdom may help us recognize we have made an unwise choice, but it takes a humble heart and a tender spirit to stop dead in our tracks, turn around, and make haste to get out of the mess we find ourselves in as a result of that choice. God knows we won't always make wise choices, but his grace calls us to return again to what we know to be right and true. The grace of God is likely what delivers all of us from the folly of our wrong choices!

A little foolishness may not seem significant until we see all the extra 'work' it results in down the road. It may not be physical work, but the longer we continue to pursue that folly, the greater the 'influence' of that folly becomes. Truth be told, none of us needs or even wants the extra work of those wrong choices, do we? Just askin!