BIG Mistakes...

Mistakes are common. Every one of us makes mistakes on a daily basis. Mistakes can be as benign as putting your left sock on inside-out; they can be mistakes of negligence like forgetting to feed the dog; they can even be communication mistakes that acidentally start arguments -- like when your wife asks, "Do these pants make my butt look big?" while you are playing 007 and you unwittingly nod, "Uh-huh".

Mistakes are unavoidable. The tragedy regarding mistakes is that, on occasion, people make BIG mistakes. BIG mistakes are not all that common and are therefore not easy to overlook.

Last week, I had the glorious fortune to commit a BIG mistake with my job (please note the sarcastic italics). My mistake is far too freshly-committed at this time for me to go into detail, so I will save the specifics for another day (or another year perhaps). When BIG mistakes are committed, it is always good for others to offer sincere consolation to the offender. My boss, Pastor Greg, very mercifully told me this funny story in response to my BIG mistake:

On the very fist day of his new job at IBM, an employee made a mistake that cost the company over 2 million dollars. The next day, the employee hand-delivered his resignation to his boss.

"What is this for?" the boss asked.

"I figured that after yesterday's mistake," replied the man "that I would be fired for sure. I wanted to save you the trouble of firing me by resigning."

The boss looked at the employee and asked, "Why in the world would I fire you after just spending 2 million dollars to train you?"

You see, I have learned that the key to life after BIG mistakes is learning to never commit the same mistake a second time. Let's all pause right now and say a prayer that I don't commit my BIG mistake again...

[pause]

Amen.