Today's Devotional

 

 January 5, 2009

                                                                                                                        

Subject:  Working With The Thief

Exodus 22:2 - "If a thief is caught breaking in and is struck so that he dies, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed."

Proverbs 29:24 "The accomplice of a thief is his own enemy; he is put under oath and dare not testify." 

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You may remember about a year ago, a Pasadena, Texas man shot and killed a man breaking into his neighbors home.  Quite a few people were upset that this man was able to shoot the criminals and there was much sympathy.  I thought about this the other day when I read an article about how robberies and burglaries had gone up in Newark, New Jersey since they began enforcing a 1966 ordinance which said that no one could use barbed wire or razor wire in the city on their fences.  The city deemed it unattractive and wanted to change the look of the city.  

A little common sense and a whole lot of scripture would make any city more attractive, but that's really not what's happening in Newark evidently.  That's also not happening in a lot of other American cities and in many of our own lives.

It made sense to God to state that criminals have to deal with bad things that happen to them because of their misdeeds.  The scripture in Proverbs above goes on to say that when we are complicit with criminals, we are are own enemy.  To me that means that we have begun to help the thief, not just the criminal thief, but also the spiritual "thief." 

Today we should all work against "the thief."  Though we may not kill the thief, understand that this is indeed "the thief's" ultimate goal for us.  Realize that to make it easier on the thief simply means that we are working with him.        

Carlen