I once heard a business speaker say, “If I could kick the person most responsible for my problems I wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week!” You may remember the famous cartoon character, POGO, the main character in Walt Kelly’s comic strip, by that name. One of Pogo’s most remembered quotes, is…”We have met the enemy and he is us.”  Kelly used a ‘play on words’ to change the original quote…”We have met the enemy and he is ours.”… spoken by American Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry when he defeated a British Navy Squadron on Lake Erie during the War of 1812. We have all heard another often-used quote…”We are our own worst enemy.”

Well, it’s true…at least for me. If we all look back at the failures or the ‘almosts’ in our lives we would have to admit that the ‘Man in the Mirror’ is the most guilty one. I would hate to have to list all of my bad decisions and the resulting loss of time, money, energy, self-esteem and relationships. I guess the Old Testament Prophet, Jonah, and I have a lot in common. If you read the Bible Book of Jonah you will be reminded of the story.  God had assigned ONE primary task to prophets…Tell people about what God was going to do in the future. That was pretty mush their entire Job Description. But when God told Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh (the location was across the river from the current city of Mosel, Iraq. It was the largest city in that known world and was the capital of the Assyrian Kingdom)…and tell them to repent of their heathen ways, Jonah complained that those people were ‘enemies’ and that he didn’t want to tell them to repent…he just wanted to watch God destroy them and their city. So, to avoid the job Jonah ran away, in the opposite direction. When a storm was about to sink the ship he was running away on, Jonah finally admitted to the crew that HE was the problem and that they were going to have to throw him overboard before God would calm the sea. They did…and the sea clamed, right after a BIG FISH swallowed Jonah. Jonah was in that fish for three days and nights. I’m not sure what he did or said while in his fishy grave but it made the fish sick! It threw up on the shore and got rid of the complaining prophet. You’ll read where Jonah went on to accomplish the job for God, but not without a few more complaints.

Today, the disgruntled world can be seen clearly in the most well staffed department of many stores…the Complaint Department (the politically correct term is…Customer Service.) If we are not careful we will become the disgruntled customer the employees talk about when they go home at night. Maybe it is because we live in a world that seems to believe that we deserve excellent service when WE are not excellent in our dealings with others. Maybe we demand that others be attentive to our desires when WE are not attentive to the desires of others. Maybe we have become too comfortable in a world that wants to sell us ‘stuff’ that caters to our every ache, pain, hunger, discomfort, need and desire. I think God would have us ‘get off our high horse’…get out of our physical and spiritual comfort zones and make a difference in a world where people are being swallowed up in the storms all around them. At least…that’s what the Mon in the Mirror just told me. He kicks me every time I complain!

May you be blessed with a reduced urge to ‘belly-ache!’
Max Holt, Class 02-67, Association Chaplain