Musings on Sour Milk

I returned from a great two-week vacation yesterday, opened the door to my truck and was instantly knocked over by a stench that was indescribable.  Being five o'clock in the morning and being too tired to look for the source of the mystery odor, it was decided that identifying the source of the odor would wait until later. 

Subsequent investigation turned up an open container of milk, left to bake in the truck for two weeks in 80 degree heat.  Having removed the source of the heavenly scent, I wonder how long it will be before the truck is able to shake off the reminder.  In the meantime, I have the constant reminder of the mistake and the potential embarrassment of how it is perceived by others when they sit in the vehicle.

It got me to thinking about the aftermath of a lot of things in life, things that start out well but for some reason, go sour and leave a stench in our life or in the life of someone else.  It doesn't matter if the act was intentional or as in the case of the milk in my truck, completely accidental but profound in result.

It is a reminder to me regarding the notion of living a life more on purpose and less by accident, a life where we are more intentional regarding the actions that we take with the hope that the actions will produce as good a result as possible.  How many times do we take action with little thought regarding the impact or do we take action knowing the potential impact but not paying as much attention as we should (or even caring at all).  The downstream impact on the lives of ourselves and others could be more profound, positive or negative, then we are cognizant of.  Given this, wouldn't it make sense that we would pay more attention to every action that we take?

For me personally, every day brings an opportunity for improvement.  I spend every day trying to improve and while I will never be able to proclaim myself as perfect (or even close to it), I will hopefully be producing a more positive result as a result of striving to do the best I can as a human being.

If we do our best as human beings and we still leave some "sour milk" behind, what do we do?  As with  my vehicle, clean up the "milk" as best as we can to prevent further complications, clean up and air out the "vehicle" in the best way possible and to the best of your ability and then allow time to finish the cleansing process. 

That being said, it is far better to be more proactive in order to avoid the negative result in the first place.  :-)

In service and servanthood.

Harry