I got a new cell phone last week. This last one made it for two years, almost to the day! I had to replace my Google Pixel with an iPhone 5. The Pixel went for a dip in the Pa c i f i c Ocean and did not like salt water.

The Google Pixel was a good phone too. I used to make video for church during the Covid virus. It went through a couple of screen replacements though. Once I dropped it from a ladder to the ground and it cracked the screen. Half of the screen lit up and the other half didn’t. It would work in my truck with the blue tooth to make and receive calls. I got it fixed and then the replacement went out. Luckily it was under warranty. The life span on it was two years, too.

Before the Google Pixel was a Samsung Galaxy. It was being repaired all the time. And yes, I had an Otter Box. One time I dropped it from a ladder in the storage building, and it landed on a corner and cracked the screen. Got a new screen. Another time I dropped it in the barn from the loft, and the screen cracked again. The guy at the phone store said that I needed to take out insurance and be a little more careful. I replied that maybe they should make their phones a little tougher.

The day after I got the phone out of the shop I dropped it out of the feed truck I was riding in. I was the gate opener. I had the phone on my leg and jumped out to get the gate and the phone fell out. We fed the cows, put out the hay, and headed back to the gate. Again, I opened and shut the gate. Then I jumped in the truck and had that uh-oh moment. Where was my phone? I got out of the truck and looked around the gate and there it was, complete with tire tracks on it, it was squished in the mud…with a cracked screen. That was when I got the Pixel.

My favorite phone story was when we lived in southwest Arkansas. I had stopped in Texarkana to fill up with gas and set my phone on the side of the bed of the truck. I finished and jumped in the truck and took off. I hadn’t gone a mile when I realized I forgot to get the phone. I stopped, looked in the back of the truck and found nothing. Then I turned around and as I pulled back in the gas station I saw the phone, both pieces. It was the old flip phone, and it was now in two distinct separate pieces…and totally inoperable.

Sunday, we had a baptism north of town at some friends’ house where there is a swimming pool. After the baptism was over, I went to the truck, put the phone on top the truck while I put a beach towel on the truck seat. Then Jill and I took off for the house. We heard a noise and looked in the mirror but didn’t see anything. We came on home and thirty minutes later I began looking for my phone. I told Jill that I now knew what that noise was that we heard when we pulled on the highway.

Got in the truck and headed back toward the house where we had the baptism and…BINGO! There was the phone in the middle of the road and wait…there was the Otter Box, all three pieces of it down the road from the phone. I whipped to the side of the road, jumped out of the truck, and picked up the phone. Then I hiked over to the pieces of the Otter Box.

The phone was literally destroyed. The screen was shattered and a chunk of it was missing on the bottom left corner. But, would you believe, it still worked. But for how long? It needed to be replaced and that’s why I got a new phone.

Now one might say that I am hard on cell phones and…they would be right. I don’t purposefully set out to see how I can destroy a phone. It just seems that the bigger they make them, the quicker I break them. And no matter how tough they make the protective cases, it seems like I have to put them to the test!

You know, after recounting all the cell phones I have had and broken, I figured something out. The quality of the phone really wasn’t the issue. Bottom line is, I am just careless. I don’t always pay attention to what I am doing in relation to my phone. Being a little more conscientious I could have saved myself a lot of grief and money.

This is the same with us and sin. We know right and wrong. We know what is allowable and not allowable, where to go and where to stay away from. As believers, we even know what God’s word says. It is kind of like our protective case (Otter Box). But, somehow, we get in a hurry, don’t think things through, or just get careless, and next thing you know, WHAM! We have succumbed to the sin we are hanging around.

Sometimes repair is needed. Go to church, read God’s word or hear a sermon on the radio and we pray and repent. Sometimes the damage is devastating. Relationships with friends, kids, spouses, and others are ruined and may never be replaced.

Like my phones, it is not that we ever set out to hurt God, friends or others, we just get careless and/or do not pay attention. And the damage can be quite costly and sometimes embarrassing.

Bottom line, I am being a little more careful with this phone. They are too expensive to replace. My life and sin are the same way. Forgiveness came at the expense of Jesus dying for my sins. I think I will be more attentive with life, too.

Breaking in a new phone, Bro. Tim