Total Depravity

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." - Romans 3:23

I was robbed this week.  Someone let himself into my Durango in the middle of a parking lot at 9:00 on a sunny morning.  He took my purse (and for a brief while my ability to contain a few choice words).  In my hurry to report this crime I ran full speed into a locked glass door.  I spent the morning filling out a police report and canceling cards and making phone calls from other people's phones.  I cried as only an angry woman can.  And then I sent a text to my stolen phone.  

"The purse you stole this morning has some very sentimental items in it and I want it back.  Just take it to the police station and leave it there."

I got my purse back that evening (minus the phone and wallet).  He hadn't taken it to the police station.  He let himself into the back door of an elderly woman's house and left it there.  Coward.  She called the police.  

Yesterday, the man who stole from me (and many others) was arrested.  I got back my grocery store discount card and a gift card I received for Christmas.  No phone.  No wallet.  But there's still hope that they may "turn up".  

I'm heartsick this morning.  Still.  After two days.  As law-abiding, middle class people we tend to sit in our houses condemning "those people" who choose to ignore what is right and good and decent.  We watch the news and read the papers in horror and shock at the evil in the world and two blocks over.  Or we stand in the check out line in the grocery store and say, "Never gonna happen here."

And yet.  And yet it does.  Because of the truth of Romans 3:23, because of the sin-nature of man, all man, it does happen here.  And there.  And down the street.  And in my town.  "For by grace you are saved through faith, and not of yourselves: it is a gift from God." - Ephesians 2:8  We forget that it is only by the grace of God we were born to parents who not only taught us the difference between right and wrong, but they taught us to care that there is a difference.  We should be thankful that we were taught to love others as ourselves and work hard for what we need and want when so many parents in this world don't have the time or desire to do so.  

I believe my Father used this week as a much needed teachable moment for me.  "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth" and that "He that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done." - Colossians 3:2, 25