Red Flags

A few nights ago, I drove through a part of the city where street repair is underway, carefully threading my way around barriers, warning signs, and caution lights. At one particularly dark section, I saw a driver who had missed a turn; his pickup truck and large trailer were off the road, stalled in an excavated area. The driver seemed to be all right, but I imagined that some time and expense were going to be involved in getting him safely back on his way: a visit from the police, a tow truck, maybe a visit to the ER to be sure he really was okay, some vehicle repair, and perhaps a call from the construction company.

We've all done it—failed to heed some warning sign of danger ahead in our life journey. Maybe we didn't see the sign, or seeing it, we did not understand what it meant. Maybe we didn't want to understand; we didn't want to be suspicious or overly cautious. Maybe we were just naïve. Whatever the reason, failing to heed the warning sign landed us in the ditch, so to speak. And then we lament, "If I had just gone with my first impression . . . "

One of the advantages we gain as we mature is the ability to pick up on warning signs. We recognize suspicious activity. We get an idea of how to tell when someone is misrepresenting their product or themselves. We accept that "when something is too good to be true, it usually is." We learn what the warning signs look like.

Unfortunately, not all people and events come with visible or audible warning signs. We have to rely on another kind of perception. We admit, "I just have a feeling . . ." This intuitiveness is not in the province of women alone. Maybe we ordinarily pay more attention to it because we're expected to. Or maybe not. Probably everyone has it to a greater or lesser degree, unconsciously relying on patterns we have experienced or observed but which we may not be aware of having classified and stored in our brain catalog. Learn to trust this instinct. We can be mistaken, of course, but more often than not, we'll be grateful we followed it.

God is a part of this perception too. Scripture relates the experiences of people who acted contrary to a reasoned-out manner because of a God-given dream or vision (Abraham, Jesus' adoptive father Joseph, the wise men, Pilate's wife, and many others), a inner knowing (the Apostle Paul, the Philadelphian church), or a sense that not everything was as it seemed (Jesus, Paul). Learn to trust this "discernment."

Following these red flags is not fool-proof. People make mistakes, sometimes very serious ones as in racial profiling—or gender profiling, or age profiling, or religious profiling, and the like. But on the smaller scale of our own personal lives and our day-to-day encounters, we will probably do well to go with our "gut feeling." It just may be a Gott-feeling (German for God).

Marjorie