Looking Like Dad

I have three sons.  The oldest is in college and is working on his master's degree.  My youngest son is still in High School.  My middle boy is in the Air Force and is stationed in Missouri.  Like all military men, he received a new hair style when he arrived at boot camp last October.  Prior to that, he was a typical young man with fairly long hair and he fought most attempts to get him a haircut.

He now keeps his hair very short, and actually seems to like it better that way!  I know I prefer my hair shorter.  I find it a lot easier to deal with when it is short.  For instance, I haven't carried a comb for many years.  I can wash my hair in the morning, dry it with a towel, run my hands over it to smooth it down, and I am ready to face the world!

Of course, I don't have much choice of hair style; I inherited it from my father.  I know the geneticists insist that you inherit male pattern baldness from your mother, but Dad was losing his hair by the time he was nineteen and so did I.  My hairstyle looks exactly like his.  All my brothers have the same hairstyle too and so did Grandpa.  I blame Dad for my lack of hair.

A few weeks ago my wife, mother-in-law and our two civilian sons took a trip to Branson, Missouri.  Our airman had to work the first day and planned to meet them there after he got off work.  My wife and her carload arrived that afternoon and they stopped at a Walmart to pick up a couple of items while they were waiting on the last Stevens to arrive.  He called her while they were shopping and asked her to pick up a cheap set of hair clippers from Walmart  He needed a haircut and wouldn't have time to get one while in Branson.  So she bought the clippers and went back to the hotel.

He arrived a short time later and asked her to cut his hair in the hotel room.  She pulled out the new clippers and plugged them in.  He sat down, they put a towel around his shoulders to catch the hair, and she commenced to cutting.  Since she was giving him a buzz, she set the clippers to the right length and took a swipe right down the middle of the top of his head.  Then the clippers stopped working.

They pulled the manual out and began reading and discovered that the clippers needed to charge for 16 hours before using them!  He looked at her and said, "I can't go out looking like Dad!"  My wife said she was laughing so hard she could hardly stand up!

They decided he would stay at the hotel a little later the next day and hope the clippers charged enough to finish the haircut.  They didn't, so now he was in a dilemma.  His hair was so butchered up that he didn't want to be seen outside.  He solved the problem by pulling out his razor and shaving his head.

I was walking to a meeting at Mayo early that morning when my cell phone began playing my "Mountain Music" ringtone.  When I answered, the first words I heard were, "Well Dad, for the first time in your life, you have more hair than I do!"  He then went on to tell me what happened. 

Men have a hard time reading the manual for the gadgets we buy.  We prefer to learn by trial and error.  That is the wrong way to live a life, though.  God gave us a manual for our lives called the Holy Bible.  It has all the directions we need to live a full and meaningful life.  Unfortunately, we have a tendency to treat the Bible like any other manual - only reading it when we mess up.  If my wife and son had read the clipper's manual first, there wouldn't have been problems.  If we read the Bible every day, and follow its directions, we will have no self-induced problems.  Yes, I know problems will still come.  But they are problems that God has already prepared solutions for.   When we cause our own problems, they tend to be stickier wickets than we would have liked!  Read your personal manual every day and see if it doesn't help you throughout the day.