All we like sheep have gone astray;
    we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:6

Help, Lord. The day has barely dawned and already I called someone on the freeway an A– (I bet you can fill in the blank)

He was clearly not following the rules. He was supposed to wait his turn but he thought he could sneak past on the right.

Everywhere you go, people are breaking the rules. Taking shortcuts, cutting corners. Cheating. It’s a worldwide epidemic. And just about every problem you can think of can be traced back to this one thing.

Someone wasn’t following the rules.

My water heater sprung a leak because the installer used cheap connections and the wrong piping. It was okay…….we were watching it. Then one morning there was a river in the backyard and now we are walking on a floor that is warped due to water damage underneath.

He thought he could cut corners.

My internet has been down for 2 weeks due to someone switching lines at the clubhouse. (We think) It was working great, and then the cable people were working on the box and it all went bad. You could hear the static in the line. We found out yesterday that if they find a line that is good (ours) they switch it with a line that is not good. Since we had our land-line disconnected they probably thought no one was using it and that’s when they swapped it with someone else’s.

At least, that is what we think happened. All evidence is pointing in that direction.

Someone took a shortcut. Instead of installing a new line they stole someone else’s.

Not following the rules, clearly.

God gave Adam and Eve one rule and one only.

Do NOT eat from that tree. “You can have every other plant,” He said. There were probably hundreds, thousands to choose from. Every kind of luscious fruit or vegetable you could ever want, desire, dream of. But there was something about that one. And I have a feeling they tasted much better than what we get now.

But that tree, there was just something about it that was so attractive. It was forbidden. It was there. That low hanging branch was just too good to pass up. It looked better than all the others. And there was that beautiful creature with the smooth voice that sounded like one of those guys on the late night Jazz station that made it even more appealing. He sounded so right…..so logical.

Then there were those 10 other rules.

Turns out we weren’t any better at following those either.

But thanks be to God. In His wisdom, He knew He needed to show us how utterly we fail without Him.

That part is still true today. I fail everywhere I turn. I disappoint people and myself every single day and so does that guy on the freeway. He fails too.

Maybe he was late for work. Maybe he just made a hasty mistake.

Maybe we all need to cut each other some slack. The same slack God used for us all.

Help me God, to be more patient. To learn to extend more grace. Thank you for loving us all and sending a solution to our universal problem. He followed all the rules perfectly because He knew we never could.

Thank you Jesus.

 

Short posts these days friends…..until I get my internet back at home. I am posting on the fly.