It has been an interesting few weeks. The news seems to have been full
of one sort of revelation or another. There were the horrific revelations about
the late Jimmy Savile’s activities. There was the “confession” of Lance Armstrong
that he was a cheat who had won so many cycling awards by using performance
enhancing drugs. There was the confession of Chris Huhne, a senior Liberal
Democrat politician, that he had “perverted the course of justice”, and, then,
as we’ve noted before, the horsemeat scandal. It has been a period of one scandal
after another.
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| Pictures taken from the BBC News web site |
One thing that struck me in this seemingly never-ending saga of
corruption was the scope of it all. I picked up the local paper recently to see
the headline detailing the suspension of a local head teacher whilst
investigations took place into his interests in pornography. Scandals seemed to
have affected nearly every branch of life. Whether it is education, politics,
business, sport, or entertainment, no area seemed exempt from the defilement. I
wonder what our thoughts are upon such matters. Do we merely shrug our
shoulders and say, “well, that’s life”? Whilst we may be shocked and saddened,
do we merely think that this is all about somebody else and something else that
has no bearing upon us?
God says through the Bible, “The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked”. Recent events, as detailed above, have proved just how
right God is. But wait a minute. Do we really understand that this verse is
speaking to me? It is always easy to point at certain situations, and the
people caught up in criminal activities, and single them out as sinners. It is
far more challenging to realize that the Bible is speaking to me! My heart is
not really different from theirs. While I haven’t committed some of the crimes
that others have, my heart is every bit as capable! It is for this reason that King
David wrote, “Create in me a clean heart, O God”. Only God can do that. We can’t
transform ourselves. Only God can remove the sin and guilt from our heart and
life. He can do that and will do that if we are prepared to confess our sin
before God and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour. What about you?
