As you wait in the grocery checkout line, corporate forces commandeer those few seconds to tease you into making an unplanned decision. Using market research, they know what visual triggers will lure you to add a tabloid or a treat to your shopping basket. You are their deer in the headlights. You are an “impulse buyer!”

Suddenly, even imperceptibly, you have incubated an unpremeditated feeling that, like the borning of a butterfly, morphed into a desire, then a decision and, finally, an action that was certainly not why you went to the store.

Our wise friend, Bobb Biehl, sees it this way. “Maturity is putting process between opportunity and decision.” So obvious but not so widely followed.

The New Testament refers to “the sin that so easily entangles us.” It’s the handy transgression. It’s said that “Sin takes you farther than you wanted to go, makes you stay longer than you wanted to stay, and costs more than you wanted to pay.”

What guard rails have you constructed to quash unwise entanglements?

“I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You.” Psalm 119:11