Stiff-necked

Having a stiff neck is a very irritating feeling. Crossing the street becomes a deadlier task (it's already a deadly task in Manila) because just to make sure you don't get hit by our friendly and law-abiding jeepney drivers, you have to twist your whole torso to the left or to the right. Worse, picture-taking becomes a torturing ordeal as you try to painfully pose in "your" angle. While smiling and enduring the pain, you imagine whacking yourself on the head for sleeping in the same position the whole night.

Yet, most of us don't realize there's a worse (probably the worst) kind of stiff-neck than the physical stiff-neck -- the "spiritual" stiff-neck. We do the same things over and over again: we lie, we cheat, we steal, we live for ourselves, we live as if there are no eternal consequences to our present actions, and we refuse to be corrected. We've become so used to our way of living that we become stiff-necked people and resist any attempts to revert to how God has originally designed our lives to be.

Eventually, we'll feel the highest point of the pain. The sad part is some of us have become immune to their own vileness that it has become normal to them. And they choose to live with it. And they'll never know the peace, the joy, the satisfaction, the comfort and the real freedom that comes with living the way God has planned for lives.

Don't be stiff-necked people. Acts 7:51.