John 10:10a The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy:

I was not raised with the understanding that I had an enemy. I did not understand that many of my misconceptions of life were feeding right into Satan’s hatred of me. He hates us all, even those who serve him.

In yesterday’s blog I barely touched the surface on how parents, surroundings and events build a perception of reality which may be flawed, tainted, or even a lie. It is nearly impossible to cover all the possibilities here, even in a year. So I would like to take just one example of perception from my life and tell you how it affected me. It had to do with fly fishing.

Allow me to say that there is more to fly fishing than learning how to cast. It was the last day of a long weekend alone with my parents on Indian Pond. My mother was paddling the raft to the other end of the pond while I made the last few casts of the trip. I had caught nothing during those three day. As we passsed near the shore I had a strike and it was a rather large Indian Pond trout.

My mother stopped paddling and began watching the fight. Suddenly she yelled at me, “He is going to jump!” Sure enough this big thick, beautiful trout rose up out of the water, flipped around and threw the hook. My mother’s heart sank, disappointment was seen all over her face. Now, being a parent myself, I can understand she was disappointed for me. As a child my perception was that she was disappointed in me.

Where was the instruction that should have come with some training in how to handle the fly rod as a fish is about to jump? Was I expected to know what to do without instruction? None of that ever happened and all I got out of the experience at the time was feeling like a failure and a disappointment.

Instruction in righteousness, right action, right relationship, was not my experience.