When you refuse to fix the fixable …

There’s an old saying that goes something like, “You’ve made your own bed, now lie in it.” It means you’ve created your own negative consequences, now you have to face them.

I think of that when I see Californians walking out of grocery stores trying to juggle all of their groceries in their arms without a bag. That odd scene is the result of the state legislature a few years ago requiring certain stores to charge at least 10 cents for plastic or paper bags. While some think this is an effort to protect the environment, the 10 cents per bag doesn’t go to any environmental efforts, the stores collect and keep the fee.

When this law requiring a fee for bags was first passed, it was met with resistance by many citizens. Instead of showing up to stores armed with their own reusable bags, people just loaded their arms full of groceries and juggled their purchases to their cars as an act of defiance to having to pay for a bag.

Then … during the last election, Californians had placed a referendum on the ballot to repeal this fee-per-bag law. I thought for sure the referendum would pass and we would no longer see people trying to carry their purchases or grudgingly agree to pay 10 cents for a bag.

But no!

As much as many citizens dislike this law and refuse to pay 10 cents for a bag, they actually defeated the referendum, leaving in place the law requiring the per-bag fee. When citizens had a chance to fix a law they didn’t like … they didn’t do it.

And so today, you still see shoppers trying to gather all their groceries in their arms in stubborn refusal to pay for a bag.

The moral of this silly but true story? If you don’t fix the fixable, you have to live with your own foolishness. The Bible says something similar this way:

“As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness,” Proverbs 26:11.

Often in life we can fix something that is wrong or broken or not right in our lives, but if we refuse to fix what is fixable the result will be living with our own foolishness. Guess how many people respond to being faced with the consequences of their unwillingness to fix the fixable …

“People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the Lord,” Proverbs 19:3.

If you don’t fix what you’re capable of fixing, don’t blame God for the negative result. You’ve made your bed, now you have to lay in it.

Scotty