Which voice are you ignoring?

I took my youngest to a harvest party-kind-of-thing over the weekend.

No, it was not a Trunk or Treat.

It was a great time - music, food, games and a hayride.  The major reason we went was that there are pony rides and my daughter loves horses.  So we stood in line twice for a ride on the pony. She loved it and I was happy that she was happy.

As we stood in line there were two girls that had to be about seven or eight years old running in circles around their grandmother.  Cute from a distance, but as we took our spot in line behind them it was obnoxious.  They were running in and out of the line, spooking the horse and generally not listening to their grandmother.  The one girl fell down and really hurt her knee on the pavement and was loud about it.  

I know, I am terrible - I thought, "well that's what you get . . ."

So I thought 'lesson learned' but sure enough the girls went right back to running in circles - causing everyone else in line to roll their eyes.  No one wanted to be near those little terrors.  You know the kind of kid, right?  The parents are smiling, like 'oh how cute they are disobeying' and you smile back but you are thinking, 'they need a swat on their fanny.'  

Yes I said it.

But we are still in front of two kids who were not at all listening to the repeated attempts of their grandmother to corral them.

So this is great, I knelt on one knee and said, "girls, I really think you need to listen to your grandmother . . ." 

- she corrected me - 

"I'm their mother . . . it's the grey hair, I know."

Oh man.  How do you recover from that?  Calling a mother a grandmother is worse than assuming someone is pregnant.

So I apologized and stood back up.  The girls totally ignored me and went back to obnoxious.  Again, the girl fell on her knee.  Again she was loud. 

I was wondering is there no connection between cause and effect here?

And once more they went back to circling wildly.  So I tried once more and got on one knee saying, "girls, the man taking care of the horse is getting nervous about your running around - can we play a game instead?"  My youngest, Kylie, joined in and got the girls playing an alphabet game and distracted them until they were next in line.

It was a victory of structure over wildness but I couldn't help but remark afterwards how Thing 1 and Thing 2 had not connected their behavior with falling on the pavement.  The girl repeatedly went back to the thing that hurt her.  

I admit I was smug . . . until I talked to God this weekend at one point.

And he reminded me how much I am like those girls.  How much we are like those girls.  We return to the things that hurt us.  We hear God's voice but we don't obey it.  

Proverbs 26:11 says it flatly:
As a dog returns to its vomit,
    so a fool repeats his foolishness.

It is like we have lives that circle hearing His voice, choosing our own way and getting hurt.  Rinse and repeat.

It is why we need grace.  But also why we need to listen to the voices in our lives that help us listen to God.  Sometimes the hurt in life is from ignoring the voices in our lives that want to help.  The voices are always there - and so is the pain - the question is which voice am I ignoring at the moment?