Christian Living

---

Larry Lilly's Letter Wednesday August 26, 2009

For some strange reason people for the last several years have been coming to me for wisdom. Knowing myself as well as I do, I find the statement of Shakespeare rising to the top of my mind each time I hear this. You recall his famous line, "Lord, what fools these mortals be."

I do think I have learned a wee bit of biblical wisdom along the way, not much for my brain moved from the soft oatmeal stage decades ago and even in my childhood days, I was more than once referred as "the child with a head as hard as concrete." Along with this trait I was also stubborn. It took many years and an ocean of tears to become the warm, tender, pliable and conciliatory man that you now know. It was not always this way.

One thing I have learned and pass on occasionally is that the Bible is true and you can discover this for yourself. A truth expressed so graphically by the Apostle Paul in the note to the Galatians in 6:7 is as true and universally known by wise men as is the sun coming up in the East.

Here is Paul's verse in Galatians 6:7:

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Every farm boy knows that this verse is right on. You will reap what you sow, you will reap more than you sow and you will reap later than you sow.

The English philosopher, Herbert Spencer, was not overly religious by any standard and in fact much of his teaching was harmful to the weak minded. Yet even Spencer grasped the truth of Galatians 6:7 as illustrated by this statement:

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."

I rejoice in the biblical truth that God forgives our sins upon our agreement with Him and our forsaking of said sins. I wish it were true that He also suspends the consequences at that time. He does not. And to attempt to develop any system that removes people from the consequences of poor choices is to develop a system of tomfoolery. Christians take comfort in the truth that consequences are used by the Lord as tools of learning and growing.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2009 Use with credit.

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE