by Sandy Kirby Quandt

Pilot is a member of a volunteer organization called Civil Air Patrol whose three main missions are aerospace education, cadet programs, and emergency services.

One member brought up the subject of the CAP participants in the field wearing BDUs — Battle Dress Uniforms — which consist of camouflage shirts and pants during deer hunting season.

Excellent point.

Who wants to be dressed in camo, wandering through a field on a rescue mission when you are surrounded by hunters who can’t tell you from a deer?

This man said he has his cadets wear fluorescent ball caps and vest.

Good thinking, I say.

He also said he knew he was breaking the uniform code regulation, and would be reprimanded, but felt it best for his cadets.

Way to go.

Rules or no rules, do what’s right.

No one wants to explain to a parent their child has been injured because a hunter couldn’t tell them from a deer.

Thinking about this man’s refusal to follow a rule he felt would endanger those in his care led me to ponder several other instances where people refused to follow certain rules.

• During his interactions with the Pharisees, Jesus often called them vipers, white-washed tombs full of dead men’s bones, and blind guides. The Pharisees prided themselves in following the man-made rules they created, yet they did not follow God’s rules. Jesus refused to go along with them.
• Previously, I wrote about the Apostle John’s refusal to follow the Jewish religious restriction that prohibited him from entering Pilot’s courts during Christ’s arrest.
• Henry D. Thoreau often practiced Civil Disobedience. (As did Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.) At one point while Thoreau was in jail for refusing to follow rules he felt were unjust, his good friend, Ralph W. Emerson, visited Thoreau. Emerson asked Thoreau what he was doing “in there”. Thoreau turned the question around and asked Emerson what are you doing “out there”.

At one point, Jesus was asked which was the greatest commandment, or rule. He answered by saying we are to love the LORD our God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind. And to love our neighbor as our self.

As long as we live there will always be rules. If our desire is to become more and more like Christ each and every day, our job, I believe, is to pray for discernment to know which rules he wants us to follow. And which ones he wants us to ignore.

Any rules you’ve felt led to ignore? Besides posted speed limit signs? 😉

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One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:28-31 (NIV)

I wish you well.

Sandy

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