Pastor Ron Burcham, Risen Savior Lutheran Church

I missed it. I missed the deadline to get an article in the Splash for the month of March! I don’t know how it happened; after all, I even had an extra day in February, but alas I missed the cut off date. There is no leeway, either you have your article submitted by 4:00 p.m. of the appointed day or you don’t get in. I knew this and I still missed it.

I thought of contacting the editor and begging for mercy, but editors are not known for dispensing mercy especially when it comes to deadlines. I thought of telling the editor that my dog ate my article, but then I remembered that all articles are submitted electronically so I would have had to convince her that my dog ate my laptop. No, that probably wouldn’t work. I could have started a petition about the unfair deadlines imposed upon the residents of Sun Lakes and publish it in the Splash! But, of course, I had missed the deadline.

I will just have to suffer the consequences of my mismanagement of time and deal with the fact that I let down my loyal readers. So I apologize to both of you.

Life is full of rules, deadlines. Break the rule, miss the deadline, do something unlawful and you will have to suffer the punishment. It could be nothing more than embarrassment for missing a deadline to time behind bars for committing a crime. As the theme song for Baretta says, “Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time!”

This is even true with our relationship to God, but there is a twist – make sure you read far enough to know the twist. God gave us His law and expects that we follow it. Although the law of God is more than the 10 commandments I think most would agree that God’s top 10 make sense. They provide a framework for society and protection for individuals.

The problem comes when we realize that we have not kept God’s law. I have yet to meet an individual who would claim to be perfect. We all have broken the law and the Bible calls this sin. The Bible also tells us that there is punishment for sin – “Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.”

Here is the twist – someone did the “time” for us! “He (Jesus) was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our Justification. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 4:25- 5:1) Jesus, the Son of God, took the punishment for us and we have been declared innocent.

Truth is I miss more than deadlines for articles. I mess up all the time, but every day I remind myself that in Christ I am forgiven. I get to start every day with a clean slate and so do you.