H2O college ministries

This little story, goes to my everlasting shame!  I am not proud of this story, but now that I look back on it, I laugh.  Don’t judge me.  I know that you got stuff too.  I know your poop stinks as well.

Have you ever done something, albeit small or big, that was done in secret, or in darkness and you thought that you could get away with it?  You know, something maybe shameful that you could tuck away and forget about it.  Well, let’s just say I had a good habit of doing that, with Winona State Parking tickets!  I never took them seriously.  The little parking security are ever where in Winona and no matter where you park these days, they ticket you!  Even outside my favority coffee joint.  Well, they would charge you 10-15 dollars per ticket.  They are not enforced by the police department, so I didn’t take them seriously, especially that I already have my degree.  When I was in school, I wouldn’t pay them either, they actually got sent home to pops and he paid for them.

Let’s just say, that over the years, I have some how accumluated, let’s say, about 4 tickets that haven’t been paid.  Since they have accumulated since 2003, I thought I could get away with it without anyone ever knowing.  Sometimes I did it consciously and other times, I meant to pay but just forgot (really???). 

Then one day I walked out to my car to find a nice little surprise.  Ok, let me paint the picture for you a bit better.  Earlier that day, I got some cash for doing some outside pastoral work, which was nice.  I was going to treat myself to a nice round of golf and take my wife out to eat.  It was also 11:45am and I had an important meeting to get to at Noon.  The surprise?  Yes, it was a nicely fitted freakin CAR BOOT!  Those are embarrassing.  Then on top of that, there was a nice blaze orange ticket that covered my whole window on my car.  So, the only way to deal with this is to pay on the spot.  Guess what?  The total fee for the removing of the car boot and the previous 5 tickets was 80!  Guess how much cash I had?  Yup, 80!  Some would say that is God’s provision!  I would say that was God’s Justice and humor!

What did I learn from this?  Simple.  Whatever is done in darkness will be exposed by the light.  Jesus taught us that.  Don’t kid yourselves.  Nothing is hidden.  The simplies thing to do, and the freest way to live, is to get things out into the light.  Otherwise, you may just get a car boot and lose that precious money.