Saturday 28 February 2009

The parable of the slippery slope

(Please note - no humans were injured in this story. However, a wall and a tree were innocent victims, and a motor vehicle and some human pride were dented!)

We live on a hill, which a friend of ours used to call 'Perth's ski slope'. We also live on a corner site.

A couple of weeks ago it snowed - quite a lot in a short period of time.

A man was driving down the hill - following a snow plough. He realised that the brakes of his vehicle were having no effect as an icy crust had formed over the snow.

At the foot of the hill there is a main road.

The man - correctly in my view - decided that it would be unwise to reach the main road, without effective brakes. So he decided to turn left, into a less hilly road to avoid probable catastrophe and to regain control over his vehicle.

The turning manoeuvre was not completely successful...

The moral of this story - sometimes in life we need to change course or take evasive action to avoid catastrophe. This may lead to some damage, bruises, dents but this is preferable to the alternative route. Even when we think that we are following a safe option (e.g. behind a snow plough), we may not have the control that we would like.

Sometimes wise choices may be painful, but we recover more readily from minor bruises than from major crashes.

To add to the interest of the story - the driver of the car was Dolly D's English teacher (we expect some good marks from now on!)

5 comments:

That Hideous Man said...

A good story - a fine sermon illustration too, all the better for the photos!

Anonymous said...

Oh I was cringing as I read the story, being able to see already the result! A good analogy.

nonprofitprophet said...

And you folks driving on the wrong side of the road doesn't help! just a bit of humor from across the pond. ~npp

Les (Endlessly Restless) said...

I should give credit to Al the Neighbour for the photos. He wasn't able to get to his work because of the snow, so he was around to take photos and remove some of the blocks of the wall from the pavement (for which I'm very grateful - I doubt if I could have lifted them!)

Thanks for the comments. I enjoyed the humour from our former colony although the challenge of spelling English words correctly still seems to evade them :-)

His Girl Friday said...

interesting thoughts, ER

one could say, life happens while we are busy making other plans...

glad no one was hurt, well I do feel for the puir tree...

...don't ya'll use chains on occasion?! ;)