what happens when you ignore trouble…

Today… I experienced what happens when you ignore the warning signs of trouble…

Literally… for several weeks… maybe a couple of months… I’ve ignored the little yellow light on the house alarm pad that reads… Trouble…

First of all… I didn’t believe it… there were no signs of trouble… no smoke wafting through the house… no burglars breaking in windows or doors…

So since I didn’t see any trouble… I thought there must be something wrong with the system… but it didn’t seem urgent…

I’ll call when I have time to deal with it…

This evening… I had to deal with it…

I pulled into the garage to a beeping noise… quite insistent… and someone’s house alarm was going off in the neighborhood… I had no idea whose… until I walked in my house…

It was our alarm… blaring over… and over… and over… and apparently had been for hours…

I find the number to the alarm company… talk to the after hours help who tells me she can’t help…  A technician will call…

When…?

Fifteen to twenty minutes…?

Is there no way for me to turn it off now…?

No… we close at 5 pm… the technician will walk you through it…

So I retire to the porch… where the blaring is at least dulled…

And true to what she said… about twenty minutes later… the technician calls…

He walks me through the trouble… told me what the trouble was…

A low battery… The trouble light comes on when the battery is getting low… that’s when you need to call us… otherwise the whole thing goes berserk…

So the lesson…?

What happens when you ignore those small signs of trouble… the warning signs in relationships… or changed behavior in a loved one… or even changes in your own health…?

If you don’t get some help… get involved in finding out what trouble is looming on the horizon… it will eventually turn into a full blown alarm… which refuses to be ignored… and your life just goes berserk…!

“…For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.” –Wisdom

Proverbs 1:32-33 ESV