Miss Interpretation

     Miss Interpretation.  She's a very confusing lady.  Sometimes she causes lots of trouble.  Take texting for example.  Someone texted the word "morning" to me today after I had texted a question.  I didn't know if it meant "good morning", "in the morning", "top of the morning", "morning has broken" or maybe even "I'm in mourning".  But  I do know that I'm pretty good at misinterpreting.  In fact I have been know to go into quite a rant because I didn't read every word.  And of course, sometimes little Miss Interpretation comes from the other party.  Someone gets hurt.  Someone gets mad.  Oh my, that Miss Interpretation.
     Just today I was driving home for lunch.  I noticed that a paint store had taken down it's sign and a new sign was on the building.  At first glance I read "marital arts".  You can imagine what all I was thinking!   Must be some sort of new age place where married couples went to learn new ways to communicate or something.  Well, when I drove back by a little later, I realized I had Miss Interpreted what it said.  It was actually "martial arts".
     This last week I witnessed and participated in lots of misinterpretations.  One was really funny and probably more of a language issue because English is not her native tongue.  Unless maybe I'm the one that's wrong.......What happened was this.  A lady was trying to tell me something about the day after tomorrow.  At first she said 'tomorrow'.  Realizing that wasn't quite right, she changed it to "three-morrow"!!!!!!  It was all I could do to not laugh!  Two-morrow.  Three-morrow.  Loved it. 
     Yesterday was Mother's Day and my family is learning to interpret me.  I'll take flowers for pretty much any occasion!  And they got me three bouquets!  Made me very happy.  But before that, I decided to visit my mother-in-law in the nursing home.  My intent was to be there for the church service with her as part of her Mother's Day gift.  Instead, we had a tornado warning and I found myself helping coral little old ladies in wheel chairs while we waited for the danger to pass.  One lady kept insisting that she needed to go to the bathroom.  She sat in her wheelchair smiling and insisting that she needed to 'go'.  At one point she was told that it was too dangerous to be in the bathroom during a tornado.  In fact, she was even told that water would shoot up out of the toilet if a tornado actually happened!  Well there was no Miss Interpretation there.  That little old lady may have been in a wheel chair and hard of hearing.  But she knew when she was being told a big fat lie just to get her mind off needing to go to the bathroom.
     Later in the day yesterday we went out to eat.  It was nice.  Then, as we left the restaurant, we heard a crash.  An older pick-up truck squealed its tires as it sped off down the street.  Unable to see the license plate, we looked over to the parking  area where the crash had happened.  There we noticed the car it had hit and thought someone might need help so we hurried over.  Asking the driver if he was ok, he just looked at us calmly and said he was.  Then we noticed someone sitting in the passenger seat texting as if nothing had happened.  That's when we realized.  What we had perceived to be a hit and run had apparently been an illegal activity gone wrong!  That's when Miss Interpretation just about got us in big trouble. We left......quickly!
     While these stories are not really big deals, well we hope they aren't anyway......what is a big deal is when we misinterpret God's Word.  We tend to interpret the Bible the way that fits our needs.  But sin is sin.  God doesn't accept it.  If He did, there would have been no reason for Jesus to die.  There is no sin, whether we thing it's big or little, that God will accept.  Even our thoughts matter to Him.  Proverbs 11 is full of amazing examples of what God accepts and doesn't accept.  V 5 "Honesty makes a good person's life easier, but the wicked will cause their own downfall."  Seriously.  There is no misinterpreting God in this chapter.  It even tells us that the righteous are protected from trouble but it comes to the wicked instead.  Can you argue with that?  Well you can try, but it won't do you any good.
     So where do you stand today?  Are you living a righteous life?  Or are you interpreting your life as righteous while God declares it wicked?  It's your choice.  You can Miss Interpret all you want.  But if you're living contrary to God's Word, well you can only do that for so long.  There will be a day of judgement.  And no Miss Interpretation will be allowed.