Look before you leap

Our family was vacationing in Maui one summer and we decided to go snorkeling on a little island that was an extinct volcano shaped like a half circle. My wife, who is always the family entertainment director for such vacations, convinced us to go on this trip and used a slick brochure as her sales tool. The brochure stated that tropical fish abounded in this area and this was indeed the premiere snorkeling area in all Hawaii and in fact the entire world for that matter. The brochure had various photos of the state of the art vessel that took the snorkelers from the main island to the snorkeling area, millions of beautiful fish, and it displayed photos of the professional looking “Dive-Masters”, (some of whom were beautiful young lasses clad in bikinis), whose responsibilities were to watch over the snorkelers during our adventure.

When we arrived, it would be a gross understatement to say that the vessel in the photo was not a true representation of the vessel in the brochure. In fact it was a dilapidated old boat that hardly looked sea-worthy. The crew consisted of some young kid with a three day old beard. Of course he had earrings, tattoos, long hair and a glazed look to his eyes.

When we arrived at the island in our slow-moving dilapidated old tub, I noticed that our boat was the only boat that went to the back of the island. Probably fifty boats were already moored inside the crater and many snorkelers could already be seen snorkeling within its inner circle. Our “leader” explained that he was going to take us to a “special” place. He said that most boats did not go there as it was considered a little dangerous because it was in over 1000 feet of water on the backside, but he assured us that it was safe and that it would be well worth it to snorkel this area. “Hey man, you will be fine”, he said, “It is way cool and you will see species of fish out here that you will not see inside”. Our plan was to snorkel around the perimeter and end up within the inner circle.

The “dive boat” was going to follow us and if anyone got in trouble or wanted out of the water our “captain” said he would be monitoring us and would bring the boat over and pick us up. My youngest son and I entered the water together. We had not gone far until I spotted a shark about 4-5 feet long. It looked like a gray reef shark to me. I pointed it out to my son. The shark was coming up from down deep. He was slowly circling, but then seemed to change his demeanor and started acting aggressive as it headed directly towards us. Next I noticed that he was joined by several other sharks and they began acting aggressive circling us and darting back and forth. One of them approached me and was getting right in my face and I kicked him with my flipper. My son could take it no more and took off like an Olympic swimmer going for the gold. He screamed at the Dive boat captain, (who was not watching us), “Hey there are sharks over here!” The dive boat kid looked at him with a big grin and gave him the thumbs up sign and said, “Cool man!” This was not the response my son was looking for and he screamed for the guy to come pick us up. In the meantime I was kicking at the aggressive sharks and trying to make my way back to the boat.

We survived this adventure and as I think back upon it, I am reminded how many times in life things are not really as they seem and/or are presented to us. Drugs, alcohol, sex outside of marriage, and other things may be presented to us in such a manner as to appear to be fun or even glamorous, but in the end are dangerous. Satan presents sin as being fun, but it is dangerous. On the surface it may look “Cool”, but once you get in the water, the story changes as there are sharks down there that will rip you to pieces. Look before you leap

Proverbs 1:10
My son, if sinners entice you,
do not give in to them.