If you obey the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, the Lord will establish you as his holy people as he swore he would do. … But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you.[Deuteronomy 28:9,15 (NLT)]
With John’s purchase of his sporty new car, I thought I was done writing about Lynn Johnston’s comic strip For Better or For Worse and temptation. I’d forgotten all about Ted, John’s friend, who suggested a “spicy dish” and some “after hours recreation.” Shocked, John had said, “Your wife wouldn’t put up with you messing around!” Ted smugly replied, “Oh she suspects…The trick is—never let them know for sure!!” Six weeks after appearing in that comic, Ted reappeared in another one. When Ted grumpily refused a ride in John’s new car, John wondered if he’d gotten out of the wrong side of the bed. No longer smug, Ted dejectedly responded, “Doesn’t matter what side of the bed I get out on anymore…My wife left me.” I didn’t see that coming and, apparently, neither did Ted!
When we yield to sin’s temptation, there are consequences, apparently something Ted learned a little too late. Then again, mankind has had trouble with that one since the beginning of time. God clearly told Adam and Eve what would happen if they ate that apple yet they did it anyway. Time and time again, the Israelites were warned in detail of the consequences of unfaithfulness to God and yet the Old Testament is a chronicle of their disobedience and the punishing consequences they endured. We want what we want but don’t expect we’ll have to pay for it. When God tells us we’ll reap what we sow, He’s not being cruel—He’s just being honest! When we suffer consequences, He’s being true to His word! Face it—when we sin, life gets difficult.
Ted cheated on his spouse and lost his marriage but what if Ted sees the light and becomes a born-again Christian? If he repents his sins, God will forgive him. Forgiveness, however, doesn’t mean God will bail him out of the consequences of his actions. The adulterer, even when born again, won’t necessarily get his wife and family back any more than the born-again criminal gets released from prison wthout serving his sentence. While coming to Christ erases the eternal consequences of our sins, we still have to deal with their earthly consequences. Fortunately, we don’t have to do it alone—God is with us. Nevertheless, we still have to expect and accept the consequences of our actions!
Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences. [Robert Louis Stevenson]
“Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives,” goes the introduction to the NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives. Since that show has aired more than 13,000 episodes since 1965, something tells me the show’s hourglass has been flipped over several times. While that hourglass keeps getting turned, the hourglass that numbers the days of our lives is glued to the table—once the sand runs through to the other side, it’s all over. Moreover, none of us have any idea how large our individual hourglass happens to be. The days of our lives are both finite and unknown.
When I was young, back in the 1950s, sex education pretty much consisted of some talk about bees pollinating flowers. Married couples on television didn’t sleep in the same bed and husbands always seemed completely surprised when wives announced a baby was arriving. As a little girl, I naively thought marriage (not intercourse) was what produced babies and that God put babies in a woman’s tummy once she was married.
While visiting family in California, I joined my daughter-in-law and her walking group on their morning hike. The leader advised us that it was about a six mile walk—what she didn’t mention was it was all uphill for the first three plus miles. Although we started off together, the group quickly fragmented. The leader and some exceptionally fit and fast walkers were in the lead. I was in the middle group; unfamiliar with the area, I was not about to lose sight of our leader and risk getting lost. Behind us was another group and, bringing up the rear, were three stragglers who abandoned us within the first twenty minutes. After an hour of walking uphill, we finally reached level ground and heaved sighs of relief. The dozen remaining walkers stopped briefly while our leader explained the rest of the course—about a mile more of climbing before starting the descent back to the parking lot. At that point, mutiny occurred and more than half the group decided to take an easier and mostly downhill route back. Used to the flatlands of southwest Florida, I was happy to join my daughter-in-law in her desertion.
