Accepting The Blame

1 Corinthians 10:13 – No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. (NIV)

Part of my childhood involved several moves in order for my father to find work. After one particular move, I remember telling my cat, Trail, how much I missed my friends and my other home.

Once, we moved into an old farmhouse, but, much to my mother's dismay, the mice had moved in ahead of us. My younger brother listened to my mother's complaints of how the mice chewed her sweater, and my father's complaints of how the mice had chewed his sheet music. Later, although the mice had been dealt with, the memory of how they were blamed for several misdeeds lingered in my brother's mind. He decided that the mice should take the blame for all of his misdeeds. One morning, my mother arrived at the breakfast table, and discovered an empty plate of donuts. (Donuts were an integral part of a fisherman's breakfast when I was growing up.) "Did you eat all the donuts?" she asked my brother.

"No!" was his prompt reply. When questioned again, he offered the following explanation, "Maybe the mouse took them." However it didn't take long for my mother to arrive at a different conclusion — for there was a trail of evidence, donut crumbs, scattered from the centre of the table to my brother's high chair.

As we go through life, we are tempted to do wrong. At times it would be so easy to give in to temptation, and then to blame someone or something else for the choices we have made. But according to Scripture, we don't have to give in to the temptation. If we ask, God will help us to do what is right.

Prayer: Dear God, we come to You with our human frailties, and ask for Your strength to withstand temptation and to live a life pleasing to You. Amen.

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