dar334

“Don’t make a yellow choice.”

Our grandchildren introduced me to the Clip Chart.  For those who are uninformed by their grandchildren, I compare the Clip Chart of today to the Principal’s Office in the days of yore.  Like the paddle of yore, the Clip Chart also includes a wooden object, a clip clothes pin.   Courtesy of a very energetic granddaughter, I was informed there is a long paper chart consisting of horizontal colored stripes of various colors that represent an action and a clothes pin with each students name written on it.  When the day begins everyone’s clothes pin is clipped on the same color, the “Start” spot, neutral ground.  As the day progresses, based on your actions, you either clip up, which is good, like you are heading to Heaven (I added that part) or you clip down, which is bad, as if headed to …. a really bad place (I also added that).   Each color you move to has a reward or punishment attached to it.  At the end of a specified time, rewards are given to those who clip up.  If I understand it correctly, the punishments for those who have to clip down are handed out immediately.  If you keep clipping down you eventually find your clothes pin on the floor. If this happens you are immediately sent to …….. THE.  PRINCIPAL’S.  OFFICE. Your mom is called and you are in big trouble mister. Clipping up has a limit and if you make it to the top you get a special prize, contrary to ending up on the roof.

The past few days I’ve felt like something has been clipping my pin down through no fault of my own.  I’ve been diligently trying to make the right choices.  The Lord has blessed me by putting some women inside that protective bubble I’ve placed around me in an attempt to keep the negative energy away.  These women, who have appeared in my bubble at different times throughout the week, have left both of us in tears, positive tears, clipping up two color tears.  They have enforced my belief that there is a one true God in control and He will be with us through everything, as long as we open the door for him.  They know this because at one of their worst moments in life, He allowed their eyes to see.  I believe.

I picked up my Upper Room magazine yesterday and turned to August 31, 2018.  The Scripture lesson was from the book of Mark 5:30 – Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”  The devotion had been written by someone who had previously visited a Catholic Cathedral in New York City in an attempt to find a quiet place to pray and reflect.  She slipped into a pew and immediately began to hear noises from every corner and people talking. She wondered if she could ever find God with so much noise and confusion.  Then she remembered the story in the Book of Mark about Jesus feeling his energy leaving him in the mist of crowds pressing him from all sides.  Even through the noise and confusion, He felt the presence of a believer.  This short devotion reminded me of a conversation I had not long ago with another women God put inside my bubble.  It was about the lack of respect she had been seeing in her church and it reminded me of the same lack I’ve been noticing in mine.

I found myself thinking and rethinking, pondering the information given me through those God allowed in my bubble, and then I smiled when I heard an elementary school teacher on the radio telling the broadcasters about her “clip chart”.  Apparently a little boy in her class made a wrong choice and was instructed to clip down to the color yellow.  After appealing to his teacher, her response to him was “Don’t make a yellow choice.”

What if we had a clip chart in our church?  What would the colors represent?  What would be reasons to clip down?  Or clip up? Whose names would be on the clothes pins?

It is strictly my opinion here, but it’s seems the choices the leaders in our churches are making these days would cause God to tell them to clip down.  I say this because it feels like the choices they are making, the clip chart in their classroom, belongs to Satan, and it contains only one direction.

Who do you want your teacher to be?  There’s One answer.

-dar