pebbles rocks and bricks...

in the last few weeks there have been several mountain lion sightings literally 5 to 10 blocks from my home...

text messages and voice mails have been sent to all residents in the area by the police department as an alert while also leaving tips on what to do if confronted by a mountain lion...most people's first response is that this is a joke...one of my friends must have left the message on my machine...

and the fact remains...these are just sightings...the police say that there is a high probability that they could just be bobcats...

as i was speaking to a resident in the neightborhood about the sightings and the alerts...it made me think about the "alerts" we get in our lives sometimes...do we choose to take the information in...or do we justify that it is just a warning...nothing to worry about?

my friends and i refer at times to the small "warnings" in our lives in reference to rocks...we call them pebbles...tiny pebbles...which then turn to small rocks...which then turn into bricks...which then turn into walls...walls that may come crashing down if the warnings are ignored...

it is always easier to look back at situations and see where the tiny pebble was...or where the brick was in a moment in time...it is easy to point out where one may have ignored the warning...for whatever reason...it may be that it was justified that it wouldn't get worse...or justified that it could be handled...

whatever the reason...warnings and alerts are there for a reason...does it mean that we need to stop doing what we are doing? not necessarily...it really does depend on the situation...but it should cause us to stop and evaluate the situation and our surroundings...call it a check point...

God is always giving us alerts when we sway from His path...do we take the tiny pebble thrown in our path and shove it off to the side? or do we take it and adjust our path, our action, our thoughts...or do we wait for a bigger alert...do we wait until the bricks start flying?

for me...i prefer to take the pebbles and learn from them and adjust my ways...there have been many times i have ignored those warnings...only to have the rocks, and then the bricks come my way...and even then...there were times i still felt the urge to ignore the warnings...till i hit the wall...and then the wall came crashing down...

yeah...at that point...i wish i had stopped at the pebble point...there are alot of shoulda woulda coulda's in life...but you live and learn...and pray that the next time...the pebbles will serve as a big enough alert to make changes if needed...