Never Got Caught

Auty always got away with it. Till He didn’t.

  At West Point he set the record of 726 demerits (that still stands today as one of worst in the over two-hundred-year history of the academy), yet never got expelled. He put little effort into his studies yet still managed to graduate even if it was at the bottom of the class. He was a notorious practical joker, but everyone still liked him no matter what pranks he pulled. As a cavalry officer, he would brazenly charge into battle with “a hoop and a holler” exposing himself to enemy fire and having one horse after another shot out from under him, yet would emerge alive. People spoke of his “luck” because he always seemed to win and never suffered career-ending injuries

  Maybe it was his good looks and his golden hair, his charm, or his bravado, but whatever it was it kept him moving up the ladder till he reached the rank of Major General. Auty, at least his family called him, never knew serious defeat until the age of 38. Most generals would have heeded the warnings of the massive forces he was about to go to battle against. But his entire life, he had charged in, got into trouble, and somehow found a way out. But not at Little Big Horn. There George Armstrong Custer's luck would finally run out.

 Sometimes we think the worst thing that can happen to us is we get caught doing something bad. The truth is not getting caught is worse. If we get caught, hopefully, we learn from our mistakes and don’t do it again. But if we get away with it, there is no reason to change. And then we do it again and again until it does catch up with us, maybe in such a way that we can never recover.

  That is why discipline isn’t a bad thing. “Sparing the rod” may seem merciful but it isn’t.  We are not lucky when our sin doesn’t find us out, more than likely we are on the road to our destruction.