In my youth, my family used to go camping in up State New York. Being a kid from the suburbs of Philly, I felt like I was going to another world! There were so many trees, wildlife and stars; it was both terrifying and beautiful! One year we had a bear problem. The first couple of nights we were there, the bear was coming into the campsite and foraging for food. One night he even tore apart a steel cooler filled with food that we had on the picnic table. After that, the park rangers set up a trap to catch the hungry bear. Excitedly, we settled in to watch from a couple hundred yards away as they set up a huge steel cage with a slab of bacon hanging from the closed end of the cage. In no time, that bear ambled in, grabbed the bacon and the trap was sprung! The bear was trapped by his own inability to see that the bacon was a lure. They shipped him up into the Canadian Wilderness.
What is your bacon? What lures you into a trap of distractions? With most of us, that lure can be small words or gestures that make us feel offended. Once that bear smelled bacon, he could not control himself. We are the same as that bear in many respects. We get offended and trap ourselves with our own distracted thoughts. Here is the process of events that will lead you to getting trapped and relocated:
You smell bacon = You are too focused on yourself and things that are not that important.
You chase bacon = You take yourself too seriously and lose sight of the more important business that is happening around you.
You grab the bacon = You take it personally and get trapped by offense.
You eat the bacon = You are satisfied for a second but then realize you are being “relocated.”
Getting offended is a trap! Stop looking for, chasing, grabbing and eating the bacon (Offense)! Start by putting your focus on other people—helping, serving, giving, getting involved with and praying for other people. We spend too much of our time focusing on and thinking about ourselves. This will always lead to getting trapped by offense, and then the offense will relocate us (take us to mental, spiritual or emotional places we do not want to go.)
Find your Passion and you will find your life!