It does not cease to amaze me how society has changed literally at warped speed in my short forty two years of life.  Music has gone from eight track tapes to I-tunes.  If a person had a BIG (twenty four inch)  TV in a box when I was a kid I considered them wealthy.  We had a Twelve inch black and white for my first TV in this life.  Phones were rotary dial with a cord that attached to the wall.  Now we carry small computers for phones and have our face in them all the time.  The school principal use to be able to give kids a spanking if they were acting outside of the standards of ethical behaviors.  (How’s that for a politically correct way of saying “when we were bad”?)  Mom’s were able to stay home with their children.   Children were able to freely ride their bikes all over the neighborhood going from friend’s house to friend’s house. What in the world has happened to us?

Now it is constant bombardment of news media with people screaming about their “rights”.   There are a lot of different weaknesses we have as human beings.  We are tempted toward all kinds of addictions, immorality, evil acts, and sexual sins.  What has blown me away is how sin went from consequences or if it was a lifestyle it was kept private to being in the face of the whole world.  Criminals can get  a lighter sentence if they plead “not guilty” when they obviously are guilty.  It amazes me to hear interviews of a person who is clearly in the wrong making their excuses and actually demanding that others say they are right.  It has become our society.  “I will do what I want and get as many human beings to say I am right as possible.  Maybe I will be able to get a few laws changed to say I am right too!!”

The one true standard that will never change is God’s.  Our society can change all it wants.  We can get as many people to tell us we are right and do what makes YOU happy, but it still doesn’t make what’s wrong right.  Nothing within our human power can wipe away the guilt that we all have.  I write this as a sinner.  There have been countless times in my life that I have been brought to the humbling point of realizing my wrongful ways.  In fact the more I try to live for God and ask him to make me more and more like Jesus the deeper realization I have of my sin.  So many times I have been brought to tears and brokenness realizing how wrong I am.   Then the brokenness turns to gratitude as I realize it is the Grace and Mercy of Jesus that has covered my wrongs and has given me hope and a future.    It is when I admit that I am wrong God teaches and grows me into something so much more.   When we demand that our wrongs are right we miss out on so  much that God has to offer.

At first when I see the news I have to admit that I feel frustrated at all the standards of God’s love and God’s creation being broken.  Then the next feeling is compassion.  I know what it feels like to have the burden of guilt and shame lifted by the blood of Jesus Christ.  I know how it feels to have a hope and a future beyond this life with no shadow of a doubt as to where I will be.  As I look at the world I feel compassion because God has created a desire in me for the whole world to have what I have!!!   No matter what standard or no standards we live by in our life we still will all face that final day when we face God’s final judgment.  God will look upon us and see a sinner covered by the Grace of the Cross OR He will not even be able to look at our sinful person and will cast his rightful judgment on a wasted life.  That will not change no matter what other human beings say, what human laws are passed, and no matter what “we get away with” in this life.  God is still God!

2 Corinthians 5:10 “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.”