I. This year my family and I have made two trips to Denver, Colorado. And for several reasons, we drove to Denver both trips. And let me tell you that Denver is a long ways from home. It is almost 800 miles drive one way. Counting it all up, we have driven well over 3,200 miles. And I am thankful that in all that long distant driving, we did not have one accident, not even a fender bender.

1. But as some of you know, my driving record is not perfect.
But the peculiar thing about the accidents I have had, is that none of them have happened on long trips away from home. Rather all my accidents have happened close to home.
I have had two pretty bad accidents right here in Springfield.
One was on National near St. Louis Street. The other was on Sunshine near Glenstone. Both accidents were my fault. And both happened right here in my hometown of Springfield.
But I have had other accidents even closer to home than this.
Twice I backed out of the garage and hit our other car that was parked in our driveway. Another time I hit the garage door with a roof top carrier on top of my car. And one time I backed out of the garage into the garage door. (I forgot to open it.) My dad did the same thing years before. Must be genetic.
But the point is, how strange it is that we can drive hundreds and even thousands of miles in unfamiliar places without a problem. But then have accidents right here at home.

2. But that is the way it is. And chances are if you thought about the accidents you have had, you too would discover that most of your accidents happen close to home. It is a statistical fact. Why is this? Listen, two words explain why we tend to have so many accidents at home: “familiarity” and “carelessness”.
Yes, the more “familiar” we are with our surroundings, the more “careless” we tend to become. Think about it. It is the things that are most familiar to us, the things we have done a million times that are the very things we tend to get careless about and so make careless mistakes. Experienced wood workers, for instance, who have cut boards hundreds of times, are so familiar with their equipment that they get careless. Fingers are lost that way. Or think about those of us who take our weekly bath on Saturday. (At least I take one every Saturday.) It is in our own bathrooms where we most often trip or slip. It is the same in our kitchens. There we get careless cutting up carrots, or moving pots on the stove, or say we are boiling eggs and forget and let the eggs boil dry. One of our members did that. (I won't mention who, ok Sara Beth?)

3. Yes the more familiar something is to us, the more careless we tend to be with it, ergo, the more prone to having an accident we become.
This is so concerning our driving, our household chores,
and this is also true concerning our relationships.
Listen, it is a disturbing truth that the more familiar we are with a person, the more careless we tend to be in our relationship with them, thus making accidents more likely to happen. Consider: all around us are people who are very familiar faces to us. We have friends we see every day. We have family we have known all our lives. Take married couples for instance. After years and years and years… and years of marriage, no one is more familiar to a wife than her husband and no one is more familiar to a husband than his wife. Our children too are most familiar with us their parents. So too outside the home, we have fellow church members with whom we have worked and worshiped for years.
And here we have a pastor, who for some of us, is the only pastor we have ever known. Greg is the familiar face and familiar voice we hear each Sunday.

4. Yes we all have people who are as close to us and familiar to us as they can be. And so, listen to this warning: it is with the people in our lives with whom we are most familiar, that we are in most danger of having minor and major accidents. That is, when someone has been our friend for a long time, we tend to get careless with how we treat them. We think that because Susan or Bob has been our good friend for so long, that nothing bad could ever happen between us. And so we get careless in how we treat them.
For example: We make a promise to do something with our friend, but then something else comes up and we break our date at the last minute.
We think "O it's just Susie. She won't mind". Then our friend gives us a gift or goes out of her way to do something for us and we barely say thank you or recognize what she has done. Again we think "O it's just Susie. I don't have to give her any special recognition. She won't mind.” Then this friend of ours talks to us about something that is troubling them, and we barely listen or respond with a sympathetic ear. "O it's just Susie. We talk all the time. She won't mind." But guess what? Susie does mind. And our careless treatment of even our most familiar of friends can lead to a broken or smashed friendship.

5. This can and does happen between friends. How much more can this happen between family members. The one place where the most serious relationship accidents happen is in the home. How carelessly do people treat the members of their own family. It concerns me when I see husbands treat their wives with less thoughtfulness, less care, less consideration, less attentiveness and less courtesy, than they do total strangers! How many of us husbands have ever spent a day away from home, seeing dozens of people and trying to be nice to every one of them, people we hardly know.
But then, when we come home, our good behavior ends. How many husbands treat our familiar and most precious family with less courtesy, less kindness, less politeness than we treat others? When we get home, something turns off in our minds. We think "this is only my family.” “I do not have to think about how I treat them.” So we are careless with the way we talk to them. We are careless in the way we show our appreciation. We are careless in the way we behave toward them, not giving them our smile or a compliment or even the simple words “please” and “thank you”.

6. Now yes, I am picking on husbands. But wives and children can behave just as carelessly toward dad. When he comes in the door at night, somebody (other than the dog) should show him they are glad he is home! And before everybody unloads their problems on him, how about giving him a “hello” and a “hug” and a simple “Hi honey” or “Hi dad”, “How was your day.”
The bottom line is this: we all must stop being careless with those who are most familiar to us! Because listen, this carelessness can and has driven many a husband and wife and many a child and parent to a wrecked relationship.