Train Rash?

Here’s a disease I’ve never heard of. No, it’s not something you get from spending too many hours riding on a train (that disease is called boredom). Train rash is something you get from standing too close to a moving train.

It seems that 3 inebriated men visiting Fargo, North Dakota for a conference wanted to take a picture of one of them real close to a moving train. They thought the closer the subject stood to the backdrop, the better the picture. Makes sense, right?

Except the man got so close that the moving train caught his shirt and pants and ripped them off. The local police sergeant, commenting on the man’s slight injuries, said he had “a bad case of train rash.”

This ailment must not be too bad. The nameless victim was released from the hospital.

Have you ever stood too close to something that you knew had the potential to tear you apart?
Sometimes we like to get as close to danger as we can, thinking we are in complete control. Some people did that last week in Galveston, Texas when they chose to “ride out the hurricane.” Now they have “hurricane rash.”

Sometimes we like to get as close to sin as we can, thinking we are in complete control. We can stop and walk away anytime we want to. Wrong. You end up with “sin rash.”

It may sound exciting, energizing, or exhilarating. In reality, you are flirting with something much bigger and faster than you. Just a centimeter closer and our tourist friend in N.D. would be dead. He is not alive because he was strong enough to not move that extra centimeter. He was not in control of that situation.

And he has a “rash” to remind him never to do it again.

Be thankful for the “sin rash” you have. Learn from it. And stay away from moving trains.