A Little Bit More

I have mentioned before that I am a Navy veteran. When I was on the ship, there was a guy that had a drinking problem, and knew he had a drinking problem (there are a lot of people in the Navy with drinking problems--few of them know they have a problem). He normally avoided drinking, because he knew that one drink led to another, and two drinks led to four, etc. As long as he didn't take that first drink, he was okay, but if he took a drink, then he felt like he could 'handle' a second drink... We pulled in somewhere in the Bahamas, I think it was, and at the liberty brief they warned us that they didn't have a local Coca-Cola bottling plant, which meant that Coke had to be imported (Pepsi, too, in case you were wondering). They did have local distilleries, though, so liquor didn't have to be imported. This means that rum is cheaper than rum-and-Coke, and rum-and-Coke is cheaper than Coke. So, our intrepid thirsty friend goes out to but a Coke, and, even after the liberty brief, he was surprised at what a Coke cost. To be honest, I was a little surprised, too, but I knew what I wanted, and I was already expecting to have to pay more for it (after that, I bought Coke on the ship, and carried it with me out into town). He decided that for that much money, he should get his money's worth. The flaw in the logic is, that if what you want is Coke, then the only way to 'get your money's worth' would be to get a larger Coke, which, of course, wasn't going to happen. Conditioned by American values, though, he felt like he was getting a better deal by getting a rum-and-Coke, as opposed to a 'virgin' Coke. I've already mentioned that rum was cheaper than Coke, so, take a guess at how much Coke he got in his drink. So now he's paid extra for the privilege of having just enough Coke in his rum to taste. And, he's getting a much stronger drink than he anticipated, and it doesn't take long for the alcohol to go to his head and convince him that another rum-and-Coke is a good idea.

Later on that evening, he was walking through the streets, and noticed a hotel that tried to create the impression of being an international entity by flying flags from many different countries from the building's facade. He was inebriated enough at that point to become very insulted that these 'foreigners' were flying an American flag, so he took it (we were, of course, the foreigners, but in his state of mind that wasn't clear to him). By the way, in case you are wondering what I was doing during all of this, we didn't get liberty at the same time--I didn't see him all that night, but he told me about it in the morning.

When he sobered up, and realized what he had done, he took the flag back, and explained himself, as best he could, to the manager of the hotel. The manager was gracious enough not only to not press charges, but also to thank him for returning the flag.

I think what brought this incident to mind was Gehazi trying to get something for nothing, in the story of Naaman the leper. I can understand Gehazi's desire, but, of course, the fact that he tried to sneak around behind the back of the man of God shows that he knew he was wrong. My friend should have known he was wrong (he knew he had a drinking problem, but he had a drink anyway), but he let money cloud his judgment. Granted, he wasn't trying to get something for nothing, exactly, but he did try to get more for less. Generally, more for less is a good thing, unless the 'more' isn't what God has for you. David ran into the same problem with Bathsheba, and that turned into a real tangle.

So often, we think we know what's best for us, but God has something better in mind. Sometimes, when we pray, we get what we want; sometimes we get what we need, instead. Sometimes we get things that we didn't even know that we wanted, and yet, it makes us forget all about what we thought we wanted.