Forked path leads to repentance

It was a borrowed truck, and a borrowed pitchfork. The turn was made a bit too quickly, causing the pitchfork to slide silently across the open tailgate and fall squarely in the middle of traffic.

From the rear-view mirror, I could see the cars swerving into the oncoming lane of traffic. From the side mirror, I could see the string of brake lights behind me marking the state of emergency.

It was another few seconds before the truth hit me. Some idiot had dropped a pitchfork on the road -- and that idiot was me!

I almost kept driving, pretending the dangerous-looking tool had come from some other careless cowboy. Had it not been a borrowed pitchfork, there's a good chance I would have left it there, a price paid for a stupid mistake.

But I couldn't just leave it there, so I returned to the scene of the crime.

By the time I circled the block, traffic on the busy road was back to normal. There was no carnage visible. No cars had slammed into other cars. No tires had been punctured by my spiked mistake.

The pitchfork, however, was broken. It didn't take a detective to figure things out. At least one driver had run over my pitchfork, snapping it in two and throwing the metal end of things into the air like the devil's personal weapon.

In the twilight of the day, it had probably been something of a frightful moment.

A well-dressed man and a kind-faced woman were on the side of the road. They had been eyewitnesses to The Fall and pulled over quickly to save the day. The man had the broken-handled pitchfork by the throat.

He looked like a reasonable person, but he was obviously an unhappy driver. He stabbed the broken tool in the dirt as if the whole thing was the ground's fault.

The two good drivers were talking about the close call on the busy street, shaking their heads at careless drivers like me. They would only need a few moments before returning to their evening commute.

In the meantime, I was only 30 feet away from the borrowed trouble. Should I borrow any more?

"If they'd only leave," I thought. "If they'd only walk away, I'd grab that fork and run. No one would know ..."

They didn't leave quickly enough, and the traffic behind me was pushing me to make a decision.

I turned left.

I took the long way across town, and hoped the pitchfork would be there later, when no one would realize that a coward lived in the neighborhood.

Hours later and under the cover of darkness, I reclaimed my forked failure.

This left me with some questions I didn't want to answer. What in the world made a usually reasonable man turn away from an opportunity to be corrected? What could have brought me back under the cover of darkness to undo any sign of daylight weakness?

More than likely, you know what made me act irrationally. It's something deep inside us that tells us to take any road -- any road -- other than the Road of Repentance.

This is human nature. We openly proclaim our innocence when we know full well the extent of our guilt. We have our excuses ready for the day we're finally caught. We enthusiastically agree that the whole world has "sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," but our first response when our own yard tools bounce around in traffic is to disown any personal responsibility.

Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the snake, and I'm not all that happy with pitchforks that won't stay put.

I've been revisiting the concept that David was a "man after God's own heart." Like me, David was far from perfect. Like me, David had plenty of sin on his resume.

But David managed to become known as someone who knew God personally. Amazingly, David appeared to be in the middle of God's grace when he should have endured God's wrath.

Shouldn't adultery, murder and lying incur divine punishment? Of course it should.

What made David a "man after God's own heart?" When it boils down to it, only one thing. When David got caught, he took responsibility. When his sin was finally exposed, he admitted that he'd been wrong. He asked for forgiveness. He repented. He changed. He grieved the pain he had caused.

David found "God's heart" only because he admitted his heart had a sin problem.

This is what I like to call the Road of Repentance. This is the only road that leads straight to a vibrant relationship with God. The concept is so important that every prophet hammered on the subject. And the first cry of Jesus as he began to preach? "Repent!"

As for me, the pitchfork was repaired and the lesson was never forgotten. There's only one way to earn the title of a man or woman after God's own heart.

We'll have to take the Road of Repentance.

Andy Cook lives in Peach County and is the founder of Experience Israel Now.

This story was originally published November 6, 2015 at 9:04 PM with the headline "Forked path leads to repentance ."