Spring means the birth of new beginnings, but it also signals a dawning of mowing the lawn. For many, home improvement ideas begin to dance around in our heads – I for one.<\/p>\n
My wife and I live in an older home and we had a concrete pad in front of the side door for as long as I could recall. The thought occurred to me it would be nice to have a roof with support columns over that.<\/p>\n
Having a contractor background, I calculated the material needed and began to build it with the blessings of my spouse.<\/p>\n
All went well until the day came to apply the shingles.<\/p>\n
It was a Saturday, a warm one, and as I placed the finishing touches on the day’s work I stepped back to acquire my work. I should have paid more attention to where the edge was, because my foot slipped over the side and down I went – falling some ten feet.<\/p>\n
I didn’t remember much after that. I’m relying on what my wife said occurred.<\/p>\n
She said I walked into the house and sat down at the kitchen table. My face was scratched up, my knee was bleeding, and I complained of side pain. Cindy asked me what happened. She told me I said, “I think I fell off the roof … I don’t know.”<\/p>\n
After she’d cleaned the wounds, my wife said I told her, “I’d like to lay down for a while.” As I lay in bed, Cindy said I started talking nonsense. I asked her several times, “What happened?”<\/p>\n
Her answer always was, “You fell off the roof!”<\/p>\n
“What roof?”<\/p>\n
“The porch roof, Greg!”<\/p>\n
“We have a porch?”<\/p>\n
Cindy said I then blurted out, “I think I may have a concussion!”<\/p>\n
She asked me if I’d like to go to the emergency room, but I declined. According to her, I chose to take a nap with a cold cloth pressed to my forehead.<\/p>\n
Things slipping your mind is a symptom of a concussion, an injury to the brain. I was fortunate to awake a couple hours later with no lasting symptoms.<\/p>\n
A concussion is a serious matter and shouldn’t be taken lightly – I’d like to make that clear. Now that I’ve had time to reflect upon that, it brings me to my point and the comparison there of:<\/p>\n
When we make mistakes, as we all do, we\u2019re only a breath away from forgiveness. Asking God to forgive us of our sins is an easy thing – if we only try. When we do ask for forgiveness He remembers the sin no more. I heard a minister once say, “He throws it into the sea of forgetfulness. An analogy of God imposing a self-inflicted concussion upon Himself is what I compare it to.<\/p>\n
Your relatives, or friends, never seem to forget – nor does the evil one. Remember that bonehead stunt you pulled? They may say.<\/p>\n
God, on the other hand, can’t recall a thing. “What sin? You sinned?”<\/p>\n
Greg Allen\u2019s column, Thinkin\u2019 Out Loud, is published bi-monthly. He\u2019s an author, syndicated columnist and the founder of Builder of the Spirit in Jamestown, Indiana, a non-profit organization aiding the poor. Contact him at www.builderofthespirit.org or 765-676-5014.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a9 Greg Allen ~ All Rights Reserved<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spring means the birth of new beginnings, but it also signals a dawning of mowing the lawn. For many, home improvement ideas begin to dance around in our heads – I for one. My wife and I live in an older home and we had a concrete pad in front of the side door for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-23"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alettlewis.com\/non-profit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alettlewis.com\/non-profit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alettlewis.com\/non-profit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alettlewis.com\/non-profit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alettlewis.com\/non-profit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/alettlewis.com\/non-profit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1281,"href":"https:\/\/alettlewis.com\/non-profit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions\/1281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alettlewis.com\/non-profit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alettlewis.com\/non-profit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alettlewis.com\/non-profit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}