Morning Devotional

November  19, 2005
"Follow the Bubbles"       
    by Don Emmitte

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When I learn your righteous laws, I will thank you by living as I should! I will obey your principles. Please don't give up on me! How can a young person stay pure? By obeying your word and following its rules. I have tried my best to find you, don't let me wander from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. (Psalm 119:7-11 NLT).

 

Vern Treat tells about a scuba diver who said that when you're in deep water, you're encircled by light, so there's no way you can tell which way is up because the water diffuses the light. You're also totally weightless, so you have no sense of gravity. Surrounded in an aura of light and weightless, it's very easy to lose all sense of direction and get disoriented. You may sense that this way is up and that your air bubbles are going sideways. You may be so convinced that your perception is true that you decide to ignore your bubbles and go the way you think is up. Because of this phenomenon one of the cardinal rules in learning to scuba-dive is to always trust your bubbles – to always follow your bubbles. No matter how you feel, no matter what you think, your bubbles are always right.

Life can be like that at times too. If we base the rules of life on our feelings, perception or what we think, we can be very easily led astray. The philosophy, "If it feels good it must be right," is a dangerous guide to follow because our feelings can play all sorts of tricks on us. If something is wrong, it is wrong regardless of how we feel or what we think. True, it's important that we don't deny or repress our feelings as we can learn to trust them – but what we can't always trust is our interpretation of them.

In any decision of our lives there will be many voices giving advice. Some of them sound so familiar that they seem to be our own. However, the only measurement is the truth that God has given us in the Scripture. This is what the psalmist indicates in our reading this morning. “Hiding the word of God in our heart” is another way of saying that we read and meditate on the directions God has already given us.

The only safe guide to follow when it comes to the rules of life is to trust God and his Word, the Bible. Therein lie the "bubbles of life" to follow. These "bubbles" are always right. Always!