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dontlookattheduck            I do a chapel every year for pre-school in which we play a game called “Don’t Look at that Duck.” It is a simple game with only one rule - all you have to do is not look at the duck. I have a wooden mallard decoy, and I hold it behind my back. I talk a while about ducks and then, without warning I hold the duck in front of me and say: “Don’t look at that duck!” The kids are supposed to look away – but they never do; not at first. The first few times I yell “Don’t look at that duck!” everyone looks at the duck.  But after two or three times the children naturally develop strategies. These three and four year olds figure out to keep their eyes shut, to keep their heads bowed, or their necks turned. After the fifth or sixth time not one of them looks at the duck.  I haven’t instructed them at all. They figure it out. They learn that right behavior is deliberate. The application I make is this: “It is easy to do wrong, but you have to try to do right.”

            The Bible story that goes along with our game is Adam and Eve in the garden. “They had only one rule,” I tell the children, “Don’t eat from that tree - and do you know what they did?” The children always know, even before I read the text. They ate from the tree of course. Even a three-year-old knows enough of human behavior to predict that.

            It is perhaps the most important lesson I teach them that first semester. It is a lesson I have yet to master at 54 years old. I am older than many of their grandparents, yet every time we play “Don’t Look at that Duck” I am instructed by these children, and reminded of how little I have matured since I was their age.  How quickly they learn. How easily we forget.

            In order to avoid evil we have to try. Living deliberately is the only way we will succeed in being obedient. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount that if our right eye offends us we should pluck it out. If our right hand offends us we should cut it off (Matthew 5.29-30). What is He saying but that we must take drastic and deliberate action if we are to avoid sin?

            But we don’t. We take no thought of what we see, where we are, what we expose ourselves to. We seek out temptation because it is entertaining or pleasurable. Then we wonder why we have failed again. We have been given the resources to succeed. We have been given God’s word. We have been given the capacity to understand it - even a three-year-old can figure out in five minutes or less how not to look at that duck.  We have been given the Spirit who sanctifies us (I Peter 1.2). We are without excuse.

            Genesis 3 is clear. Although the serpent lied to Eve, she was clearly aware of what God had said – she repeats it verbatim (Genesis 3.2). Ultimately she eats of the fruit because she wants to eat it (v.6).

            “There was only one rule: ‘Don’t eat from that tree,’ and do you know what they did?” I ask that every year, and every year the children immediately know the answer. They ate from that tree. We know it too – first hand, on a daily basis. This is the way things are. It is not the way things have to be. We don’t have to eat of the tree, or look at the duck, or yield to any temptation.  May we learn from these three and four year olds how not to fail. May we remember that when we do fail He is ready to forgive (I John 2.1-2). May we remember that grace is not license (Romans 6.1-2). And may we remember, taking all these facts together, that we are without excuse.