Cockleburs & Doctrine

We have told the girls since we moved here to stay away from the sheds, the machinery, the fields…to stay in our yard because of the many dangers ‘out there’…whatever those dangers may be. Last evening when I got home Jill told me that earlier in the evening Anna came running into the house screaming that Bella was going to die. Shortly behind her was Bella screaming at the top of her lungs that she had been poisoned and was going to die. After she finally calmed them both down, Jill asked them what was going on, to which they replied that Bella had gotten poison all over her. Jill looked at Bella only to find cockleburs all over her pant legs. They were sticking her and somehow she or Anna concluded (or someone had told them) that cockleburs were poison. It was funny to me, and Jill even said she had to smile when it happened, but it reminds me that we will sometimes get all excited over some little thing, giving the wrong impression to others. This is especially so with new believers. There is an issue or doctrine that we either struggle with or feel passionately about and we let on as if that is the only doctrine central to the faith, instead of the side issue it really is. Like Bella and Anna, some new believers might become traumatized when they first encounter it, but let’s face it, many of our self-expressed doctrines are much like cockleburs: they are a gift from God, deserving our attention, and at times a nuisance, but they are not poison!