All good kids like milk.
If you know anything about children, you know that is a lie. Some won’t even drink it with chocolate, as hard as that is to believe.
But the statement isn’t really about kids and milk. It’s a mnemonic device I learned while working for UPS. It helped me to memorize the company’s five seeing habits for safe driving.
The first habit is: Aim high in steering. It means to look far down the road to see hazards before you get to them on the highway. If there is a stalled car ahead, you are much better able to maneuver safely past it if you see it long before you get to it.
It’s also true in life that it’s good to aim high as we steer our way along. We need to take the long view of things rather than focusing only on today. If we don’t do that, we may wind up somewhere we didn’t really plan to go.
If, for example, a student decides to skip studying to enjoy a few hours of basketball with his buddies, he may have a great time today, but fail the test tomorrow. (I’m, of course speaking purely hypothetically here in the hopes that none of you know anyone who can tell you about my college habits.) Or, if I were to binge today on chocolate and ice cream (again, speaking totally hypothetically — really!), I couldn’t realistically expect the scales tomorrow to show a weight loss.
That seems totally obvious, but we sometimes think we can cheat that principle. Many say they want a strong, life-long marriage, but don’t do anything daily to produce that down the road. Many well-intentioned people hope to “some day” have a deep, personal relationship with God, but they rarely do thing to develop that relationship — attend church, pray, or read their Bible.
There is a simple, foundational principle to remember: “A man reaps what he sows” (Galatians 6:7). We pick what we plant. What we will be tomorrow is determined by what we are becoming today. Always!
Aim high in steering. Think carefully about where you want to go and begin today steering that direction. You may be surprised years from now to discover how far you’ve come by carefully plotting your course.
As for getting the kids to drink milk, ask the UPS guy; I can’t help you there.

Keith Wishum is minister, Williams Road Church, Americus.