Nibbling Away
Story★★★★Mike Yaconelli wrote on the Wittenburg Door: ‘’I live in a small, rural community. There are lots of cattle ranches around here, and, every once in a while, a cow wanders off and gets lost. . . . Ask a rancher how a cow gets lost, and chances are he will reply, ‘Well, the cow starts nibbling on a tuft of green grass, and when it finishes, it looks ahead to the next tuft of green grass and starts nibbling on that one, and then it nibbles on a tuft of grass right next to a hole in the fence.
It then sees another tuft of green grass on the other side of the fence, so it nibbles on that one and then goes on to the next tuft. The next thing you know, the cow has nibbled itself into being lost.’ “1 Most people don’t deliberately set out to backslide, but following their appetites or desires from one tuft to the next, they nibble themselves through the fence and off the straight and narrow path.
1 Leadership journal, Fall 1988, 45. 1 Vance Havner, It Is Time (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1943), 77. 3Charles Allen, Perfect Peace (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H.
Revell Co., 1979), 42.
The point
Like a cow that wanders off by nibbling from one tuft of grass to the next, people backslide not by decision but by gradually following their desires off the straight path.