Scarface

When I was a kid, there was another kid in my church who was a year younger than me. We called him Scarface. That was because he had a huge scar running from his mouth to his ear.

Scarface didn’t like to do what anybody said. He only wanted to do what he wanted to do. If anybody told him what to do, he got angry.

You might wonder how Scarface got his scar. It happened this way:

One of the best things to do during the winter is sledding. All of us loved to take our sleds to the biggest hill we could find, jump on, and whiz down the hill. Our parents taught us some safety rules, such as making sure there was nothing at the bottom of the hill that would hurt us if we hit it. And we learned some techniques of our own, such as how to roll off the sled if we went too fast or lost control or need to stop quickly.

One winter day, Scarface woke up to find lots of new snow. And, it wasn’t a school day, so he had time for sledding. He put on his warm clothes and ran outside, grabbing his sled on the way. He met some of his friends at their favorite sledding hill, and they had fun sliding down the hill for a while.

But soon, Scarface wanted a new challenge. He decided he wanted to go to a different hill—one his parents had said not to sled on because it was dangerous.

Scarface knew all the safety rules the rest of us did, and he knew what his parents had told him, but he wanted to sled down that hill anyway. He persuaded some of his friends to go with him to the new hill. They were scared, though, because they also knew the hill was dangerous.

When they got to the hill, Scarface looked down it and said, “See? There’s nothing wrong with this hill! Our parents just don’t want us to have any fun.”

Without waiting for a reply, Scarface flopped on his sled and whooshed down the hill. The hill was really steep, so he was going fast. Really fast. It was awesome!

What Scarface didn’t know was that at the bottom of the hill, buried in the snow, was a barbed wire fence. Barbed wire fences have many sharp points that are supposed to keep farm animals from escaping their farm.

When Scarface reached the fence, those barbs hit him in the face and cut him badly. Even though the doctor tried to fix him up, he was left with a huge scar across his face from his mouth to his ear.

I wish I could say that Scarface learned to obey his parents. Unfortunately, he didn’t.

Even though Scarface thought that his parents were trying to destroy his fun, they were actually trying to help him. It’s the same way with God. God and our parents want to help us, not make life more difficult.

The Bible says in James 1:25: “But suppose you take a good look at the perfect law that gives freedom. You keep looking at it. You don’t forget what you’ve heard, but you do what the law says. Then you will be blessed in what you do” (NIrV). God’s instructions actually give us freedom, because they prevent us from having so many problems. Can you be thankful for rules?