“The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.” (Pr 28:1 AV)
The
benefit of living right as manifested above is peace of mind. When we live wrong or do wrong, one of the
fears we live with is being found out.
What happens if what we did ever came to light. So, we are cautious with how much we allow
ourselves to be put at risk. We wonder
what would happen if we made ourselves a target for others to do a little bit
of digging. Now, no one is perfect. We all have skeletons in the closet. We all have those things we hope no one
discovers. Those things that we have evaded
and covered. Those things which only you
and God know about. Those things for which
we have sought and gained forgiveness. Those
things which God has put in the past and we should too. We all have those things. But this is more than mere mistakes or sins
of the past. This is present sin. The wicked above are presently wicked. They have not repented. They have not sought God’s mercy and
forgiveness. They live in constant anxiety
and fear that one day, someone will discover who and what they are. Not what they once were. The protection against this anxiety is living
righteously. Not perfectly. Righteously.
That means we strive to live free of sin, but if we fall, we seek mercy
and forgiveness. Then we seek
empowerment from the Holy Spirit to live after the Spirit and not after the flesh.
My
father was insistent that we keep our accounts up to date with our paper route
customers. His purpose was
two-fold. First, the longer we allowed
an account to lapse, the longer it was that we felt we couldn’t ask our customer
for the past-due balance. Some wonderful
customers put aside their payments weekly.
When I knocked on their door to ‘collect’, the funds were neatly placed
in an envelope. Then some never thought
about it until I came to ‘collect’. Then
they scrambled to find the funds. Then some
told me to come back some other time.
Finally, some went on vacation and never informed me. They had a neighbor gather their paper. So, I would knock on their door for several
weeks. When the ‘stubs’ began to
accumulate, it was more intimidating to ask the customer to make their account
current than it was to simply stop collecting.
I would pay their bill out of my tips.
Then, my father knew that a good customer made a good citizen. He wanted us to collect on past due accounts so
that we could drop a customer who was a problem. All of this made for a stressful early
childhood. Confronting adults was not a
comfortable thing to do. But that is
what my dad wanted. As stated before,
when I was too intimidated to seek payment, I calculated how much tip I had
accumulated and would pay off some of the past due accounts. The problem is, I had three other siblings
who also had routes. There would be a pattern
of tips to fees ratio. Comparing the
other three routes to my own, my father could quickly tell if I was using tip
money for something other than what it was intended. Having gotten caught several times, I simply chose
to hide the fact there were a few customers who hadn’t paid their bills. This can be hidden rather easily by simply
stating a certain percentage of customers had paid their bills. No one had to know it was the same group of
customers every week and there were a few that owed months' worth. This bothered me. I would even rip out the stubs and throw them
away so my father wouldn’t find out I had lapsed on a few customers. Living in a constant state of deceit is
stressful! Not until I confessed to my
father what I was doing was I able to report every week. Being the father he was, he went with me one Friday
night and collected on all the back accounts I had allowed to lapse.
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