Learning Our Lesson

I struck up a conversation with a young receptionist and learned that the previous weekend her boyfriend physically abused her and, in her anger and her escape, she totaled her car. With bruises on her arms and the scratches on her neck I encouraged her to file a police report, but she had already decided to chalk it up to a bad experience, “I’ve learned my lesson. I got rid of my boyfriend and I won’t ever let this happen again.” She then went on to say that this was not the first time the boyfriend had knocked her around. Common sense tells me she should have learned her lesson after the first incident. However, Paul reminds me that common sense doesn’t always win out over our actions, “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members” (Ro 7:21-23 NIV).