Choir Notes

Safe From Danger
From Music and the Spoken Word
Delivered By: Lloyd D. Newell • Program 4213

Nobody makes it through life without making mistakes. Some are harmless, but others can be dangerous. Most often, safety lies in being cautious and wise. We don’t usually get into trouble without disregarding a rule of safety or some code of behavior. Danger lurks on the other side of a warning. Maybe it’s a No Trespassing or Use Caution sign; it could be the small print on a bottle or perhaps a trail marker or even an unsettled feeling. Whatever form the warning takes, it can save us from a lot of trouble.

Kenny, a fictional fourth-grader in Christopher Paul Curtis’s book The Watsons Go to Birmingham, learned this lesson well. On a hot summer day in Alabama, Kenny could not resist the temptation to go swimming, despite the No Swimming sign and warnings about a whirlpool. But Kenny could see no danger, so he decided to swim anyway. At first, he was only going to step in the water, but when he caught sight of a turtle, he decided to swim toward it. Before he knew it, he was caught in the vicious whirlpool.

Reflecting on his near-death experience, the boy said: “There’s one good thing about getting in trouble: It seems like you do it in steps. . . . It also seems like the worse the trouble is that you get into, the more steps it takes to get there. Sort of like you’re getting a bunch of little warnings on the way; sort of like if you really wanted to you could turn around.”¹

Whether the danger is a whirlpool or something less tangible, we can choose to avoid precarious situations by being wise enough to heed warnings. Seek out and listen to the counsel of those who have gone before. Find safety in prudent laws, rules, commandments, and guideposts. See them not as restrictions but as welcome warnings that keep us out of harm’s way. Even if we think we know better, as Kenny did, chances are we’ll be glad we paid attention to the “little warnings on the way.”

1 The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 (1995), 173.