It still sickens me to see it. Those plumes of smoke over Cape Canaveral - the awful trail from what had been the Space Shuttle Challenger. Teacher Christa McAuliffe and six other crew members were gone before our eyes. Hard to believe it was 25 years ago. Hard to believe the memories and the feelings are still so vivid.
Once we had mourned the devastating losses, the national outcry was, "What happened? How could something like this happen?" The answer found by an investigative commission seemed so simple it was almost surreal. The shuttle blew up and seven American heroes died because a little "O-ring" seal on the solid-fuel rocket failed. An O-ring did this???
According to the commission report, it turns out that space officials had ignored warnings about the possible flaws in that seal. And so, something very small caused a disaster that was very big.
That happens a lot. In our personal lives. The life of a family...a church...a business...a ministry. You ignore a small problem. And ultimately everything blows up. A little "innocent" flirtation today becomes the betrayal of adultery you could have never imagined. You let the "sun go down on your anger" (Ephesians 4:27) tonight, never dreaming that "stuffed" bitterness will grow into a bomb that can shatter your marriage. You put off dealing with a "small" problem until it morphs into a conflict that can ruin everything. Under pressure, you make a couple of small compromises in telling the truth, in doing everything with integrity - and later drink the bitter cup of the trust you lost.
It's so easy to bury it or ignore it because it seems so small. After all, you're on a mission, and who's got time for little malfunctions? You can be sure that ultimately you'll have time for it - when it's a raging inferno. When it's too big to ignore, maybe too big to fix. It is, as the Bible says, "the little foxes that ruin the vineyards" (Song of Solomon 2:15).
Today would be a good day for me to look at my anchor relationships, my work, my personal walk with God and ask myself, "Is there a small problem that I've put off dealing with? It's not going to go away just because I ignore it." It will never be smaller, easier to deal with than it is today. I don't need any more explosions from what I could have fixed when it was small.
I think about the people who have Jesus in the category of "something I'll deal with later." People who consider the sin-wall between us and God something that just doesn't seem as important as today's screaming agenda. In reality, we have nothing more important to get settled than getting right with God. Nothing more urgent than facing Jesus and saying, "You died for me. I'm Yours." You can keep running past Him until suddenly one day you're standing before Him in eternity. Not ready. That's why the Bible says, "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart...now is the day of salvation" (Hebrews 4:7; 2 Corinthians 6:2).
The bill for putting things off is unthinkably high. Especially if you're putting off God.