Doing Our
Own Homework
But thou
shalt remember the Lord thy God:
for it is
he that giveth thee power to get wealth,
that he
may establish his covenant
which he
sware unto thy fathers,
as it is
this day.
and it
shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God,
and walk
after other gods,
and serve
them, and worship them,
I testify
against you this day that ye shall surely perish.
As the
nations which the Lord destroyeth before your face,
so shall
ye perish;
because ye
would not be obedient
unto the
voice of the Lord your God.
--
Deuteronomy 8:18-20
If you ever want to know what's going on in the
world - I mean REALLY going on - go to the cereal aisle at the grocery store.
The other day, I ran into the grocery store
after listening to talk radio on that gi-normous, pork-pumped-up,
beaucoup-bazillion dollar bailout that Congress has granted to the greedy
slackers who created the subprime mortgage mess.
I was fuming over how that scandal was caused by
the same thing that's happened with gas prices, food prices and college tuition
prices: no one can afford anything any more because of the middlemen, bankers,
regulators, assistants to the associate vice-director of toilet paper, and
everybody else all along the line, who dip in at every stage of every
transaction, and take a "cut" for doing next to nothing. It's to the point at
which, for a big box of breakfast cereal, the farmer who grew the grain gets,
like, a nickel.
And I was furious about the news report that the
two highest paid Nebraska state employees, whose salaries are provided courtesy
of the taxpayers of the State of Nebraska, are not even WORKING in our state
this year. Heyyy! If you don't work, you're not supposed to eat. Right? But
nooooo. They got golden parachutes which continue to pay them much more than
our governor or anybody else in state government, much less most of the rest of
us. They're getting paid handsomely to NOT work . . . because we fired them for
being an inept head football coach and a terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad
athletic director for the University of Nebraska, who have absolutely nuked our
once-proud football program. Same deal as the subprime ratfinks, now
multi-millionaires at our expense.
All this stuff is so contrary to God's ways. Ew!
Ew! Ewwwwww!
So I was pushing my cart down the cereal aisle,
still in mid-fume, wondering how we ebbed this low, when I overheard this
soccer mom saying brassily to her friend on her cell phone:
"Oh, yeah, I do his homework.
"Yeah, every night.
"No, he's got football and tae kwon do.
"I HAVE to. If I DON'T, he'll look like the
worst student in the class.
". . . Because all the OTHER parents are doing
THEIR kids' homework, too!!!"
WHAT THE . . . ???
They're ALL doing their kids' homework?!?
And she's blabbing that, in the cereal aisle?!?
Doesn't she GET IT? Doesn't she see how she's
ENABLING her son's irresponsibility? Setting him up to not want to do anything
for himself, much less know how? Doesn't she realize she's teaching him to
CHEAT?!? To NOT work?!?
I had one of those out-of-body experiences,
right there between the Honey Bunches of O's and the Fiber One. My mind raced
to the future. That kid, Freddie Mac Slackerson, had just been appointed chief
executive officer of a government-backed mortgage company. His mother, Fannie
Mae Everybodysdoingit, was holding a book for him to be sworn in. But it wasn't
the Bible. It was . . . The Joy of
Ripoffs!!!!!
Since she looked like she could beat me up, I
pushed on, powerless and silent.
But not really. You never are, when you've got
God on speed-dial. And we all should, given what's going on in our country and
around the world right now, from the cereal aisle to the aisles of Congress.
Lord, Lord, get that mom's attention. Get her to
stop bailing her son out and making him lazy. Get her to teach him to look to
You for guidance, follow Your rules about work and honesty, accept challenges,
learn from shortcomings and failures, and get in the habit of standing on his
own two feet.
Ditto for our country, Jesus!
Help me be that kind of a person, too. Inspire
others all over our nation to stand up and shout for Your ways: honesty,
integrity, hard work, initiative, generosity, humility, and most of all,
obedience to Your Word in everything we do.
Anything less, and we get what we've got: a
crisis of character that has caused this crisis in our economy and in our
politics, our sports, our businesses, our very lives.
Anything less than living by Your ways is Froot
Loop behavior. Lord, we don't want to be Froot Loops!
Lord, Lord . . . help us to do our OWN homework
in every way, and rejoice in You when we are rewarded with lives and finances that
are so good, they go "snap, crackle, pop!" †
