“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”  Edmund Burke

The Bible is history as well as future history.  The lessons are there for us to learn and, yet, we do not.  Instead, we fall back on the lie.  “Did God really say…?” was the question Satan asked the first couple and he has continued to ask that deceptive question.  We want to question God and His wisdom because we, after all, have a better way.  Just look at our track record.  That is, our history of success in living without God’s meddling.  While history is replete with the ruins of cultures who turned their backs on God, we know better, we will will make event turn out differently.  Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

One of the best examples I can think of is smoking.  People do not remember that there was a time when it was thought that smoking tobacco was actually good for the body.  Imagine, the ingesting of the smoke from a burning plant deep into the lungs was believed to have beneficial medicinal qualities.  Even when the evidence suggested a connection between smoking and cancer as well as other lung diseases people doubted the findings, questioned the research.  Today, we have marijuana.  The current mantra is that there are no consequences for casual or even regular smoking marijuana.  After all, how could there be any problem with ingesting smoke from a burning plant deep into the lungs?  How could there be any danger in unnaturally adjusting the function of the brain?  The slowly developing research shows that those who use cannabis even on an occasional basis lose mental abilities but we press on with our denial.  What could possibly go wrong…?

Charlie Steinmetz was the perfect man for Henry Ford.  Charlie was one of the most proficient electrical engineers of his time which is exactly what Ford needed when constructing his automobile assembly plant in Dearborn, Michigan.  Charlie built several massive generators which powered much of the equipment on Ford’s new assembly line.

And so it happened that, one day, one of those generators stopped working.  Ford’s best maintenance workers struggled to repair the machine to no avail.  Finally, Ford called in his old friend.  With Henry Ford and the rest of the plant watching, Charlie wandered around the plant, listened, analyzed and deliberated.  Finally, he took a hammer, walked behind the generator and pounded on a section of it.  Then he started up the generator and the assembly plant returned to building cars.

Not too long after, Ford received a bill from Charlie Steinmetz for the astounding sum of $10,000.00.  Well, Henry Ford did not become wealthy by giving away his money freely.  He called up his old friend and expressed his concern at the size of the bill.  After all, Charlie had only spent a few minutes at the plant and had done nothing more than hit a generator with a hammer.  Charlie apologized.  Of course, he would resubmit the bill.

A few days later, Henry Ford received a revised bill from Charlie Steinmetz.  It read, for hammering on a generator, $5.00.  For knowing where to hammer, $9,995.00.  Henry Ford, it is said, paid the bill.