OUT TO PASTOR: I don’t believe in karma

Some people believe in karma, but I don’t.

I do believe that everything you do does have consequences. Sometimes those consequences are small and insignificant – and sometimes rather large and unbearing.

Recently, my truck was in the garage for about six weeks getting a new engine. That was the longest time I’d been separated from my truck in, I don’t know how many years. It was either get a new engine or a new truck. The engine was a lot cheaper.

While my truck was in the shop, I used the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage’s van.

Believe me when I say it was a challenge to drive that little van. It was difficult for me to get in and out, and once I was in, it was hard for me to move about.

I had no choice. Either borrow my wife’s van or walk.

I don’t mind walking as long as it’s to the refrigerator and back to my easy chair. But to walk a couple of miles to the church office was not on my schedule of to-does.

Our schedules are pretty much the opposite, so when she needed to use her van, I was comfortable with that, and when I needed to use her van, she was comfortable with that.

Then, of course, there were those times we had to travel together. When that happened, I always allowed her to take the wheel.

How in the world anybody ever was able to make a van so small is beyond my imagination. It isn’t what a “real man” delights in driving. I put up with it and managed to drive to my appointments, to my office, and so forth. But I wasn’t a happy driver in that regard. I couldn’t wait for my truck to get finished.

Then the day came when my truck was finished and ready to pick up. My wife drove me to the shop, and I was able to pick up my good old truck. Driving home was a very wonderful experience that I long shall cherish. 

I did make one little blunder.

I talked to someone about my experience driving my wife’s van, and not knowing she was within earshot, I described her van as a “Sissy Van.”

I should realize by now that my wife, like every other wife, has ears that can hear everything. My wife can hear what I’m saying three days before I’m thinking it. How that happens, I have no idea, and believe me, I’m not going to try to find out.

“Did you just refer to my van,” my wife said to me rather sternly with both hands on her hips, “as a Sissy Van?”

I never challenge what my wife hears, only explain by saying, “That’s not exactly what I meant.”

“All right,” she said very seriously, “just remember that what you do always comes back on you.”

I smiled and shrugged the comment off. I simply don’t believe in karma.

Almost four weeks to the day, things began to happen.

I was driving my truck and on a Friday I drove to church to do some work at the office. Everything seemed to be going fine.

When done, I went to my truck to go home. I turned the key, and the engine did not start. Oh boy, I said to myself, what is wrong here. I did everything I could think of to get the truck started. It was at 4:15 in the afternoon, and the repair shop where I take my truck closes at 2 o’clock on Friday afternoons. So I was stuck until Monday.

The hardest thing I had to do was call the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage and tell her I was stuck, the truck wouldn’t start, and could you come and pick me up?

She came to pick me up and drove me home. She was relatively silent on the way home, but I knew exactly what she was thinking.

That Sunday, as I was setting up the sound system to record the Sunday service, I could not get it working. None of the microphones worked, and there wasn’t anything I could do to change it.

I had to get it fixed by Wednesday because that’s when I record our weekly radio program. So if I don’t get it fixed by then, I’m in trouble.

That was Sunday. Then Monday came tiptoeing along, and somebody had hacked into my email, and I could not open up my email. I worked very hard to get it open and set a new password, but nothing worked. So finally, the email service locked me out for 24 hours because I had done it too many times.

It took several days to unlock my account, so I could use my email.

I still don’t believe in karma, but sometimes things come back on you because of some of your actions.

I read in the Scriptures that evening, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7).

I need to learn how to be careful in what I sow because that is exactly what I will reap.

Dr. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family of God Fellowship, Ocala, FL 34472, where he lives with his wife. Call him at 352-216-3025 or e-mail jamessnyder51@gmail.com. The church web site is www.whatafellowship.com.