Squirreled away in my attic somewhere you’ll find a handful of my spiral notebooks from college. I covered them with brown paper back then; pasted colorful collages of magazine photos on the outside, sometimes with handwriting in black ink edging the photos. I was an assiduous note-taker during all those college chapels. Didn’t want to miss a thing. (Which has its advantages, though I could have stood to be a bit more discerning.) I still vaguely remember one of the lines my mind latched on to: something about letting our lives be an example for others.

And we see that all over in Scripture, right? The city on a hill. Paul’s words to be wise in the way you behave toward outsiders.

But the other day on a blog, I read a question parents were to pose to their kids in times of discipline: Are you being a good example? I gotta admit. I cringed at that one a little bit. Honestly, it’s probably a fine question. But my mind flew back to that line in my notebook. I remember reading it years later and thinking, I got that one wrong.