Slick Picklins, Attorney at Law

I said, “I will guard my ways,
​​Lest I sin with my tongue;
​​I will restrain my mouth with a muzzle,
​​While the wicked are before me.” Psalm 39:1

In his youth, Jim "Slick" Picklins employed the athletic skills of the truly inept and clumsy. It did not require a mind of surpassing analytical skill to sense that a career as a professional athlete would be forever beyond his grasping fingers as the ball once again failed to rise up to meet them as he passed by headlong and headed for another collision with the innocent earth. The other team's runners lit out for extra bases, and Picklins once again managed to make a perfectly normal outfield appear greased. " 'Slick' Picklins does it again," his coach muttered with a disbelieving shake of his head, and the name stuck to Jim with all the tenacity of any youthful derogatory appellation.

As an attorney, Jim found the opportunity to be the champion that he could never be on the ball field. Defender of the oppressed, hero to the innocent, and other such titles danced in his mind upon his graduation from law school even through his early days serving as a new defense attorney. It would be a few years before Jim's analysis caught up with his idealism. When on a cloudy and dreary day in the office with no cases in the works, Jim came to understand that most of his clients were neither innocent nor oppressed. Some were so obviously headed to the big house that they filled out a resume of crime in a similar manner to an actor taking the tough bit parts and ad gigs on the way to the leading roles. Shoplifting as a youth, burglary and theft in their teen years, and finally armed robbery and grand theft auto to round out the criminal CV before Jim saw them off to spend years locked away from society was an all too common theme in his office. Add in a few illegal drugs and Jim might not see them incarcerated before the truly serious crimes landed them a life sentence.

It was on this day that Jim discovered our verse for today. For the wicked, he came to know, had a ready answer to every suggestion or admonition Jim tried to lay on them by way of restraining their evil ways. For payment, Jim had been offered drugs, weapons, and sexual favors; the favors offered by either sex and from such diverse ages as to make a complete rotation of his head a distinct possibility. The pull of the dark side was strong in this office, Jim realized, to borrow phrase from an old movie. And on this day, Jim "Slick" Picklins began to pray more earnestly and more often for strength to follow the Way of Christ in a world of sin.

Bucky