When I was in High School, a friend of mine from a wealthy family had a new CJ5 Jeep given to him by his Dad. The CJ5 was all the craze in the early 70’s as some of you will no doubt recall. There was this winter day that I am reminded of, when my friend Bob and I took a ride in his jeep. That wasn’t a problem, but the timing of the ride was, since we were both supposed to be in a class. Our campus was a closed campus and so you were not allowed to come and go freely. You were expected to be at school all day and if you didn’t have a regular class, you had a study hall. We had a class and still decide to go freely. It was a typically snowy winter in Maine that year. The parking lot at the school had been cleared of the multiple snow storms by plowing the snow up into huge piles. One of these piles was taller than a single story home. When we returned from our nice country drive and entered the parking lot of the school we were more than a little surprised when the car that we met in the parking lot was being driven by none other than the school’s principle, who by the way was quite familiar with both Bob and me.
Now sometimes it is good to be well known by people in authority and it can be an advantage. There are other times, when it is more or less, let’s just say, a negative. In this particular incident, it was the later case. The principle, recognizing us both, and being fairly confident that we did not have an excused absence from campus to be driving around together, turned his vehicle around and began to follow us. My friend Bob, seeing this in his rear view mirror, decided to try and take evasive action. What that meant was driving around rows of cars and behind those large mounds of snow in the hope that either 1: the principle wasn’t really following us, or 2: that we could somehow out maneuver him and get back inside before being apprehended. Number 2 was less attractive because of his eyewitness encounter with us, which was sure to outweigh any lame, flimsy and/or ridiculously illogical excuse that we two could conjure up between us.
It turns out that neither 1 nor 2 actually played out in the end. What did happen is that after several rather impressive moves to evade the principle failed and Bob realized the inevitability of our demise, he tried one last ditch, I think somewhat panic influenced, attempt to elude capture. Bob placed the CJ5 into 4-wheel drive and headed straight for the largest mound of snow in the parking lot. Then he put it in low gear and hit the throttle. The CJ climbed that mountain of snow like it was a paved highway; climbing until we came to rest at the summit. There we sat perched, and for all intents and purposes, treed. The principle drove to the base of the mound and began to yell at us and threaten us. He could however, not reach us. We had ourselves a standoff, a temporary draw. The trouble was, as you already know, that he could wait longer than we could. Besides, sooner or later it warms up even in Maine and the snow would melt and we’d be done. We eventually surrendered peacefully. Bob drove the CJ down and parked it and we trudged off to the principles office to meet our destiny with the consequences, which we had so willingly purchased by our actions.
You know, it’s a funny thing. You can try and avoid consequences or you can try to create good ones. My experiences have proven to me that creating good ones is the most rewarding. When we walk with God in obedience to His ways, we begin to sow the seed that will produce good consequences. Like I did in school, we get to pick and we get to reap. Blessings!

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