Books of the Bible - Galloshans!

This week is an important week for my precious 5 year old. This week is the week that she needs to remember the books of the bible so she can achieve her goal in AWANA and get an invite to the Achievement Party. It was suddenly my responsibility to make sure she had it all correct – at least that was what she told me.

So I sat with Cara and her AWANA book – “Matthew, Mark, Luke …” the first group rolled off the tongue relatively quickly, although she did seem to lose Romans a lot of the time. I thought, “There are a number times that I seem to forget Romans too, or at least some of the things it says in it.” We finished that first group and moved to the epistles – a little tricky for a 5 year old, but she is a smart kid and I am confident that she can do it. She steadied herself and began, “Galatians, Ephesians, Philipians, Galloshans…” I paused her for a moment and enquired what that last book was again – “Galloshans! Daddy.”

She was so close, and yet so far away from the truth. I must say that my first thought was that of Dora the Explorer's little buddy, Boots, and maybe he went to the church of Galloshans. Then I had mental images of what the Veggie Tales people would do with the concept of Paul writing a letter to the church of the Galloshans. When I snapped back to my seat at the kitchen table, I realized that the most amusing thing was that she was sure she was right – and she would today believe that Paul wrote to the Galloshans, had I not helped her see the little pen stroke that makes a C into a G wasn’t actually there.

How often do we do the very same things? How often do we believe something, and believe it strongly, only to find out that our understanding is not 100% accurate, and often it is only the smallest of pen strokes, or most innocuous of things that makes all the difference. As I reflected on this incident this morning in my commute, I was struck by how many times we draw a line in the sand and defend a position that is indefensible, if only we saw all of the facts as they were and not as we perceived them. We believe that we are right, yet we have missed one vital detail. There are even times when we have inserted a pen stroke where none existed, we have inserted information where there should not be any. We have taken our understanding of a subject and defend it as strongly as any proven truth. Yet, we are wrong.

What do you do in those times? Is saving face more important than acknowledging our error and our weakness?

What should we do at those times?

Why are those two things different?