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Title
Parable of the letter box
by Greg Carrick
We'd occasionally hear explosions during the night around Mt Evelyn (where
I live), and find the next day that a letter box or two had been blown apart.
It's a consequence of uncaring kids who's parents don't have a clue.
So when I came home late one friday night and my wife told me another bomb
had gone off I wasn't surprised. I walked the street and found one letter
box pulled up, and another one half blown out by a bomb. Some local teens
had been heard running away after the explosion. As usual, they felt safe
breaking the law after dark, and not hanging around for the judgement! That's
the way people feel comfortable in doing wrong, using the dark to cover
their actions.
The next day, my daughter, Joy, was out by our car (a bright orange kombi),
and saw three teens walking up the street, who then stopped and looked at
the half destroyed letter box. Suspecting that they were returning to the
scene of their crime, she came inside and told me.
When we went back out, they were walking off down the street, so I took
a good look at them, checking their height and clothing just in case. After
watching them for a bit, I looked around at the letter box, and saw flames
pouring out of the top. I was amazed! In the middle of the day, with people
out on the street, these kids had set fire to it. It showed how little they
cared about concealing their actions, or about getting caught. The more
often you practice wrong, the more daring and uncaring you become. Until
you simply adopt it as your way of life and drop all pretence of hiding
it.
Now I had to make a choice, did I put out the fire, or chase the vandals?
Knowing how easily fire can spread, Joy and I ran over to the letter-box.
We looked at the fire and tried to blow it out. When we blew the flames
aside, we saw what it was that was burning. We saw a wick.
At the moment that we realized what we were staring it, it blew up. And
let me tell you, God had his hand in front of us both. With splintered wood
blasting around our faces, we went temporarily deaf, but neither of us had
a scratch.
Wrong-doing (sin) has many consequences, some of them affecting people who
are simple by-standers.
Nothing motivates you quite like a bomb blast in the face! I ran inside,
grabbed my car keys and camera. Joy grabbed a large staff we use for hiking,
and we jumped in the kombi.
We knew which walking tracks the kids had ran up, and it led to the shops.
We drove up to the shops and parked, getting out to walk down and meet them
coming up. When they saw us coming, they again turned and ran. Knowing where
the streets met the track, we drove ahead to be in place before they got
there. We did this for 45 minutes- walk, drive, run. We were determined
to catch them and bring the matter to a conclusion.
God chases people too. But not for judgement, as I was doing, but to give
them a way out of their wrong. That's what God calls salvation, his plan
of saving people from their sin.
After all that time of running, one of the teens finally gave up trying
to escape. He was exhausted, and complained "Everywhere we went, you were
there waiting for us".
GOT TO PAGE 2
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