You can’t blame the hedgehog. He is small with short legs. The gate separating him from the garden is lengthy. Little steps mean that it takes a long time to get around the gate to the opening into the garden. So he looks for a shortcut.

Not every shortcut is bad. Some are excellent. But this hedgehog’s shortcut failed due to hedgehog thinking—a malfunction common to humans. As the hedgehog journeyed down the alarmingly elongated fence it poked its nose into every piece of metal scrollwork looking for a wider gap so it could get through. However, the factory manufactured fence was uniform and no gap was wider. So the hedgehog took the shortcut anyway—and got stuck. (Not to worry—he was rescued.)

We humans do that in life. Take shortcuts doomed to failure. We want to harvest success in our life, but without the planting, weeding, watering, and nurturing required to guarantee it. We just want it to happen.

We want to skip the training process and get right to the rewarding qualification. We just want it to happen.

We want to lose weight—but not exercise. We want to maintain our perfect body size and shape and still eat everything we enjoy regardless of calories. Perfect health? We just want it to happen.

We want joy, but without giving up resentment, anger, and criticism. We just want it to happen.

We want our lives to be stellar, our trials short, our hardships easy. And when we disagree with something in the Bible, we want to change the words to ones we prefer and reject verses that tell us to endure hardships as a good soldier of Christ, or that remind us that, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10.

Hedgehog thinking. It’s not just about hedgehogs.

Amazon.com: Stephanie Parker McKean: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle