You know that strange commercial where the woman’s guests keep disappearing, and we discover they have all fallen into the crack of her sofa and are living down there?  Keith put his hands down the crack of the narrowest upholstered chair in the house and, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat or endless scarves out of his sleeves, he kept coming up with the oddest things—a Ghiradelli dark chocolate square wrapper, 2 unpopped popcorn kernels, 3 red hots, 2 broken rubber bands, 4 shelled but shriveled peas, a nail file, a ballpoint pen, 3 quarters, 3 dimes, 3 nickels and 5 pennies, a fifteen inch square red bandanna, a twelve by five decorator pillow, and a co-ax cable connector.  I am afraid to try the much broader backed sofa—there really might be people living down there.

I know we have all experienced that feeling of being “lost in the cracks.” We have all had applications, letters, requests, complaints, and worst of all, payments, lost in the paper shuffle of doctor’s offices, large corporations, and government agencies.  Depending upon the issue, it could cause anything from the minor annoyance of a simple delay to the more serious problems of cut-off utilities or destroyed credit ratings.  It’s a helpless feeling, and a lonely one, to know you have done everything right and still this has happened—and no one seems to care.

Now just imagine your reaction if you had not done everything right.  You filled out the wrong form with the wrong information, sent it to the wrong address with the wrong amount of money, and you did it all two years late.  Not only that, but everything you did wrong you did that way on purpose.  Yet a week later you receive everything you had asked for anyway with promises of more whenever you needed it.

You would shake your head and say, “This can’t be possible,” and you would be right.

But isn’t that exactly what we receive with God?  In spite of our best efforts to wreck our lives, to sink into the depths of sin and be lost among the myriads who are content to live there, his searching hand will find us if we just reach out and take it.  We will never be lost in the cracks.

And Jehovah said, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry over all the abominations that are done in the midst thereof.  And to the others he said in my hearing, Go through the city after him and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have pity, and slay utterly…but come not near anyone upon whom is the mark.

The firm foundation of God stands having this seal, The Lord knows those who are his…Ezek 9:4-6; 2 Tim 2:19.

Dene Ward

If there is one thing the world has wrong about Jesus it’s this:  the idea that Jesus not only accepts us as sinners but allows us to keep on sinning because He is so kind and loving.  And one of their favorite examples is the adulterous woman in John 8. Nonsense!

In the first place, Jesus’ attitude toward sin is really just a side issue in this narrative.  This is about the Pharisees trying to trap Jesus yet again, and His being able to avoid the snare yet again.

They brought Him a woman who had committed adultery “caught in the very
act,” they said.  “The law of Moses says we should stone her.  What do you think?”

Jesus first did what we ought to do 90% of the time.  He kept His mouth shut. 
When your mouth is shut, you can think better.  And this was an obvious trap, if you just thought about it.  His silence also did this:  they kept pressing Him until it must surely have become obvious to many who were listening exactly what their motive was as Jesus calmly stooped and wrote in the dirt.
             
And what was so obvious about the trap?  He was approached while he was
teaching, a time when there would be many to see and hear His downfall (they
hoped), and whatever He had been teaching at the time would have been made ineffective.  He was not asked what the Law said, but what He thought. 
Asking rabbis what they thought about scriptures was not unusual, but if
anyone disagreed with Him, perhaps they would no longer listen to Him.  They said she was caught in the very act, so where was the man?  According to the Law they seemed so concerned about, Deut 22:22, both should have been brought for judgment, so it was obvious that doing right was the last thing on their minds.

This was the trap:  if He says that she deserves to die, He has pronounced the death sentence without the permission of the Roman authorities, which the Jews were not allowed to do, so He is in trouble with the powers that be. 
If He says otherwise, He is in trouble with the Jewish people who held
Him to be a prophet and a righteous man, because He has disobeyed God’s
law.
             
But with one sentence, He turns the whole thing around on them.  He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.  I find it hard to believe that these men who would soon murder Him and within a short time afterward imprison, abuse, and murder His followers were at all stung by a guilty conscience.  His few words remind them that the Law says they are to carry out the sentence because they were the witnesses, the ones who caught her “in the very act,” Deut 17:2-7.  The Law says Jesus could not lift a hand against her until they cast the first stones.  So now who is in the trap?  Are they willing to follow the Law in spite of the Roman dictum against capital punishment?
             
And so Jesus once again stooped down to scribble in the dirt, and when He
looked up, everyone was gone.  And now, He could not accuse her, not because He condoned sin but because there were no witnesses; and He could not stone her, for the same reason.  He would not have participated in a travesty of justice anyway, but now He simply could not, according to God’s Law.
             
But what does He say to her?  Go thy way and sin no more.
             
Jesus never has and never will accept sin.  He will accept sinners, but only if they change their lives and begin to live righteously.  Even then, when
they slip and fall, He expects remorse, repentance, and growth that make those sins farther and farther apart.  For each of us, when we lay our sin at His feet, the answer is the same:  Go thy way and sin no more.
             
I bet that woman of so long ago did her best not to let Him down again.  Can we do any less?
 
My little children, let no man lead you astray.  He who does righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous.  He who does sin is of the devil, for the devil sinned from the beginning.  To this end was the Son of God made manifest, that he might destroy the works of the devil, 1 John 3:7,8.

Dene Ward

I have been clipping and redeeming coupons since we got married.  I have a file box and a system.  I search ads faithfully and use them to  plan both my shopping trip and my meals.   And I don’t fall into the coupon traps—if I don’t need it or won’t use  it, or did not want to try it anyway, I don’t buy it.  We got by for 50% less than most families with teenage  boys.

 I seldom have one of those shopping trips you hear about, where the
woman buys $100 worth of groceries for $2.98, primarily because I do not buy a  lot of processed, prepared foods. I  have a garden; I bake from scratch. My grocery bill rarely includes anything but staples, meat, paper goods,  and the few produce items we do not grow, like onions, potatoes, and   garlic.  You don’t find many coupons for those things, but occasionally I make a “coupon coup.”  There was the jar of mustard, regularly $1.29, on sale for 99 cents.  A 50 cent coupon brought it down to 49 cents.  There was the week Publix
actually put their bakery’s key lime pie on sale for $4.50.  I had a $2.50 coupon PLUS they gave away a free loaf of French bread with every pie.  So for $2.00 I got a  key lime pie (regular $7.49) and a loaf of French bread (regular $1.99). I couldn’t have made a key lime pie alone for any less than $4.00, and theirs is nearly as good.

 Then I raided the drug store, the popular hang-out for those who are aging.  Keith needed glucosamine chondroitin.  $30.00 a bottle.  It was buy one get one, plus I had a $3.00 coupon.  We needed vitamins, regular $6.00 a bottle. 
They were buy one get one, plus I had a $2.00 coupon.  They also had my favorite shampoo on sale, one I hardly ever get to buy  because it is usually $4.29 a bottle.  They had it for $3.00, plus I had a coupon for $2.00 off 2, plus, for  buying two, they automatically gave me another $1.00 off anything in the store at the check-out, effectively making the price $1.50 a bottle. Finally we needed some low dose aspirins--$4.69 a bottle.  I had a $4.00 coupon, making that 69 cents.  Are you keeping track?  I bought $86.29 worth of items for $38.19.  Don’t  tell me the time I spend clipping and sorting isn’t worth it.  
  
Redeeming coupons brings to mind another sort of redemption.  I am always thrilled when I get a high  quality item for a low price. I would never pay full price for a crushed box of crackers or a dented can of tomato paste; nor would I for wilted produce—maybe half price for overripe bananas because they still have some use.  But top dollar?  Forget it.

 I am so glad God was not as stingy as I am!  He redeemed me, paying full price not for dented cans, crushed boxes, or even overripe bananas.  He got the culls, the totally useless, rotten, spoiled produce; he paid top dollar for
something no one else would have even considered buying.  
 
I think, when you have “been good” all your life, perhaps “raised in the church,” as we are prone to say, it is hard to realize our worthlessness, and really appreciate what has been done for us.  An old song goes, “Alas and did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die; would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?”  I noticed that in  one of the newer hymnals that last line has been changed to “such a one as I.”  Unh-unh. We need to get the “worm” back in there, because that is how low we were—totally worthless and disgusting--when Jesus redeemed us, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold…but with precious blood, as a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ, 1 Pet 1:18,19.  Truly the Lord is gracious.  In fact, we got the real bargain—precious grace for irregular, damaged merchandise!

 For while we were weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, maybe for a good an someone would dare to die.  But God commends his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  Rom 5:6-8       
 
Dene Ward