Has He Caught You?

© 2021 by Tom Boynton (editing by Kathy Boynton)

Years ago, there was a fist-fighting upsurge, among the boys, in the hallways of our high school.  The principal called a school-wide assembly during which he “read us the riot act”!  He said that the next time he found someone fighting in the halls, he would expel them from school.  In those days, that was a fearful thing to most students.  I didn’t like fights in the halls.  Consequently, I found myself in hearty agreement with the principal’s promised penalty.  My silent thoughts were something like “yeah! – You tell ‘em!”  As the assembly concluded, I felt like justice had been mightily served!  I found myself hoping the principal would catch and expel each one of those terrible boys.

Several days later, during study hall, I was sitting in the front desk, of a row of desks, doing homework.  Another boy sat in the last desk of that same row.  The intervening desks were all empty.  He began pushing them into the back of my desk.  He did this repeatedly.  I finally turned around and told him to stop.  As I did, I pushed all the desks back into him.  He stopped but said, “I’ll see YOU at the locker after study hall!”  I continued doing homework and, by the time I went to my locker, I’d pretty much forgotten about the desks.  Suddenly, I felt a fist punching my back.  I didn’t think that was nice!  So I turned around and punched him in the nose.  His nose started bleeding.  The teacher from the classroom near our lockers grabbed both of us and ordered us down to the principal’s office to be disciplined.  In those days, you didn’t disobey such an order!

Standing before the principal, neither of us was angry at the other.  That anger had been consumed by our obvious guilt in his presence.

Since those days, this incident has been a reminder to me that God’s anger at the wicked is even more serious than that of a principal.

“God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.” (Psalms 7:11)

We’re all born into this life dead in sins.  We’ve each dreadfully violated God’s holy requirements.  His penalty for sin is not just expulsion from high school.  It is an eternal death of agony.  Jesus Christ became the blood sacrifice for sin’s penalty by dying on the cross at Calvary.  As His Holy Spirit moves in the heart of a sinner, that heart reaches out to seek Christ’s forgiveness.

Has He changed your heart to seek Christ’s forgiveness?  God is much more powerful than our principal was.  If you die without Christ, you shall experience His anger and eternal punishment forever.

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