The inexperienced believe anything, but the sensible watch their steps.
– Proverbs 14:15

Small things can determine the outcome of a game. Years ago, I served as one of the coaches on my son’s 10-year old youth baseball team. It’s a common rule on this level for every player to play in the field for at least one inning and to get an opportunity to bat at least once. One of our younger and inexperienced players came to the plate in the last inning and to our surprise and delight, hit a double to left field. With the winning run only a hit away, the dugout was rocking. The next hitter, hit a slow grounder between first and second base and our runner raced around third and slid home with what he “believed” was the winning run. However, the opposing team appealed the play, saying our player failed to tag third base. Our hearts sank when the umpire gave the out signal. We eventually lost the game in extra innings.

Being careless or not paying attention to detail can cause us hardship in our faith walk too. Experience can be a hard teacher! Sometimes we make bad decisions because we don’t know any better, we’ve never been there before. In other situations, we are just careless, we just don’t take the time to fully  study the issue. One of the things that helps us stay on the right path with our decision making is studying God’s Word.  If we would just apply the book of Proverbs to our lives we could stay out of a lot of trouble. We would be wise to watch our steps as we run the base paths of life.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the wisdom of your Word. Help me to focus on the small things today, because that can make the difference in receiving your full blessing. Amen.