Good Friday morning! We are still in the rainy season here; in two days we have about the same amount of rain as the people who experience real monsoons get in about 10 seconds or so. Our rainy season is not likely to be featured on the national news any time soon. But still, we praise God for the rain to water the crops and trees (all 6 of them!) on this spring day.
You have seen the "pre-approved!" offers in your mail, probably all of us have. Anyone with a name and mailing address has probably been pre-approved by some bank to go further into debt. In life, you might say that we are pre-approved to go to Hell. There is nothing we can do about it, if we are born, we get that pre-approved condition. That does seem a bit unfair when you look at a small child, but there it is. Born of Adam, you get the basic package of sin in your life from the very start. The ability to lie, cheat, steal, fornicate, kill, hate, and become bloated with pride is all in your pre-approved package at birth. The marketing department of your credit card bank wants to be the first to congratulate you on your new pre-approved status; welcome to life.
When a person falls into the trap of accepting all those pre-approved offers in our credit card society, he or she may come to the point where a wish for a savior can be felt. The interest piles up, the payment demands keep coming, and thanks to the new law - by making the minimum payment, you Mr. Jones can now be out of debt in just 357 years! - we get helpful information like that on the statement. That last bit assumes of course that no new charges are made. The debt can easily become more than a person can pay. Someone to take all that credit card debt away and wipe the accounts clean might just become the one overarching wish of those trapped by credit cards. Who would have known that our modern situation would provide such a great example of our sin debt?
The problem is: we don't get a monthly statement of how far down our sin debt has caused us to fall. Imagine the new style statement arriving in the mail with - if you make the minimum payment on your sin debt, the debt will be paid in just: *eternity* months... imagine the chill that would bring. Sometimes a little touch of hell-fire might alert the sinner to his or her condition. A close call in an auto accident, a burned-down house, or some other calamity might suddenly bring to mind that a person hasn't been living right and the invoice for all of that sin debt could come due at any moment. A glimpse of that impending doom doesn't always cause repentance though. We do have an inborn capacity to forget that sin debt too! For those who repent, we have a savior who is always ready to forgive, offer mercy, and bestow eternal life - wiping away that sin debt completely and totally. What we cannot pay, Jesus is ready to mark "forgiven!"
Pray for those who have not yet realized their sin debt is coming due soon. Thank God for the Savior who paid the debt we cannot pay down.
Bucky
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