Do not look where you fell, but where you slipped.
AFRICAN PROVERB
There’s an old saying: “Live and learn.” Annie the dog didn’t get the memo—at least with respect to skunks. Thankfully, the results of her actions were more fragrant than fatal, but they still got her into lots of trouble.
Annie was my friend Martha’s smart and sassy border collie/cocker spaniel mix. Martha believes that the first time Annie got skunked, she thought she was approaching a big, fluffy black and white cat. Annie wasn’t pleased with the results. Ever after, she would go into hunter mode whenever she saw a skunk…and would inevitably get the worst of the encounter.
Way too often Annie went out in the yard to do her business, only to come in reeking from her failure to learn from past experiences. But perhaps her most intense skunk encounter happened on one never-to-be-forgotten Sunday morning.
Martha’s house had a crawl space beneath it. Screens at different locations provided access. Martha had seen a gardener fiddling with one of them, and warned him to be sure it was properly secured in place. On this morning, Martha had let Annie into the yard and was making coffee. She heard muffled barking and went to retrieve her dog. But Annie was gone. Momentarily, Martha wondered if there was a hole in the fence. Then she turned and saw a screen off one of the crawl space openings. Oops!
Martha looked through into the crawl space. She couldn’t see Annie, but she could hear her. Hurrying back inside, Martha went to the front bedroom. The muffled barking was clearer here, and she could smell skunk.
Martha rushed out her front door and pulled the screen off a second crawl space entrance. Annie had cornered a mama skunk and her babies. She would bark. They would spray. She would bark. They would spray. And on it went. Annie refused to see the black and white truth—she would not win this battle!
Martha started phoning for professional help, but wasn’t finding anyone who’d come out. About that time she got a call from her employer. Martha was a producer for NBC News. They informed her she needed to be on a plane for Hawaii that night to work on a story.
In desperation, Martha phoned a friend who occasionally did some doggie day care for her. This friend knew Annie well. She was also more petite than Martha and could do what Martha couldn’t—squeeze into that crawl space and drag Annie out.
Martha’s friend managed to retrieve a dirt-covered, reeking Annie from under the house. Even as Annie was being dragged to the friend’s car for cleanup and dog-sitting, she was straining at her leash to go back and keep giving those skunks “what-for.” Annie never did live and learn with respect to skunks. She chased them every chance she got for the rest of her life.
Failure to learn from getting skunked is not confined to canines. A certain biblical character had this failing too—in Technicolor. Ahab was King of Israel in the time of the Divided Kingdom. He married an evil pagan Baal worshipper named Jezebel, and began to worship Baal himself. Scripture tells us that Ahab “did more to arouse the anger of the LORD, the God of Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him” (1 Kings 16:33).
In judgment for his own and his kingdom’s idolatry, God sent a drought proclaimed by the prophet Elijah. Three years later the drought ended in a contest between Elijah and—count ’em—450 prophets of Baal. It was a contest to see whose god would send down fire and consume an offering made on Mount Carmel. You could say that those prophets—and by extension, Ahab and Jezebel—got skunked. Their dry offering wasn’t touched by fire, while Elijah’s soaking wet sacrifice was totally consumed (1 Kings 18:22-39).
The point of that little exercise was to show Ahab and all Israel that God was God! Ahab didn’t get the memo. He didn’t turn from idolatry to God except very temporarily when he found himself in dire straits. Elijah, and God, gave him every chance not only to live and learn, but to learn and live by following the Lord. Sadly, he persisted in evil and kept getting “sprayed,” not by a skunk, but by the results of his own reeking actions—which included complicity in murder—until he and his infamous queen met their divinely decreed deaths.
If truth be told, we all have areas where we can be like Annie and Ahab. We can fight what our Master is trying to show us. We can persist in attitudes and actions that are getting us skunked. Jesus squeezed into the crawl space of death to drag us out, reeking with sin, and cleanse us—but we still have our skunk-chasing old natures to deal with. Thankfully, we also have God’s Spirit. He is calling us to follow Him in the sweet-smelling paths of righteousness. Will you learn and live?
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord (Ephesians 5:8-10).
Are you fighting a losing battle with a skunk in your life? How are you getting sprayed? What support might you get from Scripture and other believers that would help you learn and live?