Humility

Last night, I had great intentions. I was going to wake up this morning at 6:00am, do my walking, do the dishes, and still be ready to go in time to do devotions and everything else before going to work.

I had gotten into bed soon after getting back from band. It was 11:00pm. I thought I'd get up and set the alarm clock. No problem. I found the alarm clock; it wasn't plugged in. So I plugged it in and synchronized it to our radio-controlled clock, being very careful to set the am/pm correctly (I've been burned on that before!). As I was doing so, I thought to myself, "You know, it really is quite simple to set an alarm clock, and yet so many times people don't set it correctly, and they're late to places." Of course, I was thinking of other people when I thought of this, not myself, but that's beside the point (or perhaps not-so-beside-the-point!). I continued in my train of thought, "All you have to do is correctly set the time including its am/pm, set the alarm itself with the correct am/pm, and then turn the alarm on." So I did that. Then, because I didn't want to be woken up, or kept up by the bright LED display, I put the clock face-down on the sewing table, turned off the lights and went to bed.

Next morning, I wake up with the sunlight streaming into my room, and I keep thinking to myself, "It's after 6. Why doesn't that stupid alarm clock go off?" Finally, I get up and look at the radio-controlled clock. 7:30am. I turn the alarm clock over: there's no LED display. I had forgotten that the outlet into which I plugged the alarm clock was controlled by the light switch (a feature I dislike exceedingly, unless you have very few built-in lights). So when I turned off the lights the night before, I cut off the power to the alarm clock.

And the moral of the story is this: Don't count your alarms before they sound. Also, it's a good idea to be humble.