I fell in the garbage

I remember one time, I was unloading a truckload of junk, and we had the truck backed up, so it hung over a garbage pit about ten feet down. The item on top was a heavy table, and from the side, I wasn't able to pull it loose, so I got at the end of it and started pulling. The good news was, I was successful in freeing the table from the back of my truck. The bad news was, when I got it free, I not only had nothing holding me up, I had a heavy table following me down into the garbage pit. The good news was, the garbage below me was reasonably soft. The more good news was, (and I'm not even sure people that do things that stupid have any right to divine protection) by the grace of heaven, the table missed me. I had the wind knocked out of me, but as soon as I got it back, I told my son, who was watching with some concern, that I never wanted him to do anything like that. So far, he hasn't.
What a painful analogy of life this is! How often do we seek so single mindedly to finish a task, that we do not take into account the pits over which we travel and into which we will fall if we complete the task? Fortunately for us, most of the time, some little warning buzzer inside our soul goes off, telling us the peril of what we are about to do. The only question is, do we have the spiritual ears to hear, the humility to hearken and the meekness to admit we were wrong? If we want to stay out of the garbage, we must.