The school bus was “speeding” . . . through the school zone!
It was 3:45. Students were still at the crosswalks, on the sidewalks, and walking out of the school.
There wasn’t a police car in sight. All that driver received for his offense was the protest I uttered to my two passengers, a protest that he didn’t even hear. Is This justice?
Justice, according to the dictionary, is the rendering of what is due. It is getting what is deserved, or what is earned. Justice can mean a reward for what is good but we usually think of it as punishment for a crime.
Crimes against God are called sin. The Bible defines these “crimes” in various ways:
- “Sin is the transgression of the law” 1 John 3:4
- “All unrighteousness is sin” 1 John 5:17
- “Whatever is not of faith is sin” Romans 14:23
- “The thought of foolishness is sin” Proverbs 24:9
- “He that despises his neighbor sins” Proverbs 14:21
- “In the multitude of words, sin is not lacking . . . ” Proverbs 10:19
- “He that knows to do good and doesn’t do it, for him, that is sin” James 4:17
The punishment for sin has also been declared: “The wages of sin is death . . . ” (Romans 6:23)
This refers not just to physical death, but to spiritual death, which is separation from God forever.
The Bible says that God is perfectly just, but because we are not struck by lightning, or some such thing, when we break His laws, we tend to think that our transgressions don’t really matter to God, that maybe He looks the other way, or doesn’t care.
The cross of Jesus Christ should remind us that our sin matters very much to Him. Sin is such an offense to God that His Son suffered and died for it . . . that sin had to be punished. God will not be unjust. Someone had to die to pay for it.
I’m sure that if the speeding bus driver had been caught and an innocent person offered to pay his fine or penalty, he would seriously consider the offer. In God’s system of justice, God does just that. The penalty was due and just, but it has been paid in full, by His Son.
Now He offers us pardon and forgiveness as a gift, but He leaves the decision to us. We can reject His offer, or accept it by faith.
A bus full of high school students saw what looked like a human hand lying on the street as they were going to school today.
Another school was closed this afternoon due to a bomb threat.
News headlines tell of schools attacked by snipers, burned down by pranksters, bullet-sprayed by crazies, taught by sexually perverted people, marched on by mad minorities, and crashed into by airplanes.
Who said, “Enjoy school -- it is the best time of your life”?
Moms and dads reading these things are beginning to “what-if?” Some have pulled their children out of school and retreated underground, to spend the rest of their lives “protected” from society in a bomb shelter. Others worry themselves gray. Still others try to shut it out, knowing they have little control.
One of these unusual events touched my life this week. As my son told me about it, this thought ran through my mind, “But we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose.”
I wondered, for a brief moment, why that verse from Romans 8 should fit this situation. But later on I realized how practical it was. The “news of the day” had not flustered me in the slightest. That truth protected me from the “what-if’s.”
I send my son to school about 200 days out of a year, and run the risk of a multitude of things that could happen to him. Yet over and over again, this promise from God sets my mind at rest. I know that it applies to me, for I love God and have been called by Him according to His purpose. But it also applies to my son. He loves God also, and has responded to His call. And, according to the Word of God, nothing is going to happen to him that God cannot use in his life, for God’s own good purpose. The very next verse (verse 29) reveals that His purpose is to transform those He calls into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Frankly, I haven’t a clue how God controls the events of life, from the ordinary to the extraordinary, and uses them to mold a person into a different person’s image. I do know that he starts from within, and gives the gift of his Son to each of us who have responded to His call. His Son lives within. Then somehow, He takes the outside and reworks it to match the inside. That makes all of life a school -- a school where every situation is a lesson or an exam, and the only way to fail is to refuse to be molded.
We will send our son back to school, confident of Who is in charge of his life, and joyfully see both kinds of school shaping him to mental and spiritual maturity. And we don’t have to “what-if.”
