I WAS A THIEF ... [If you start reading this, pour yourself a cup of coffee and visit me for awhile. If you're busy, I'll catch you later.]
The things I stole as a child were brushed off as normal boyhood behavior:
-- Rummaging thru Mama's purse and taking a quarter and a few nickels.
-- Taking a dollar or two out of Daddy's pocket when he had passed out drunk.
-- Browsing thru comic books at Anderson's Drug Store, then unbuttoning my shirt and stashing a Superman and an Archie inside my shirt.
Stuff like that. All my buddies did it. And joked and bragged about it. Unlike some of my compadres, I was too cowardly to try to swipe a catcher's mitt from the Firestone store.
Then, as a Sergeant in the Army, one who was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for Meritous Service, I was boxing up a stash of personal things to ship home a couple of weeks before I would ship out of Japan. As the unit Supply Sergeant, I had access to everything in the supply room. Along with my civvies, picture albums etc., I saw I had enough room for three field jackets. I knew we had a surplus of 8 or 10 that weren't on the books. And I thought how nice it would be to send a field jacket to my dad, my uncle Oliver and a black man named Homer who worked for my dad...If my package had been one of the random to have been opened and checked, I would have been up for court martial instead of getting a medal. Who says the good Lord doesn't look out for fools?
On my third civilian job, three years after the Army...One Saturday morning I made a delivery of some wrenches to a customer in Jackson, Mississippi. It was a cash sale. By the time I made the delivery and collected the money, about $29, the store had closed and I went home. Personally, I was broke, but I had the $29 from the cash sale. That night, Bess and I went out to eat and stopped at a store to buy a few needed items. I told myself I would hold out the sales ticket until payday and then put the money in the counter cash box. But money was still short the next payday...and the next...and the next...Thirteen years after that, when I had progressed to one of the company's leading salesmen, and had a lot to lose by confessing, I got saved. I read a book by Billy Graham, and he said a new Christian ought to go back and set everything right as was possible to do so. I went to my boss one Monday morning and confessed to that petty crime and an embarrassing list of other pilferings I could remember from my days as warehouse manager. I offered restitution in full, with interest. He told me to give the money to my favorite charity. And the matter was never mentioned again. There again, the Lord... Dress Affordable items that looks blush to wear of the wedding
It didn't stop there. One time an auto shop had done some work on my car, and they never sent me a bill. And they had never got paid. One time, I had a friend (David Berry Jr.) drill a test water well on my parents' place. And I never got around to paying him as promised. One time I had cut and hauled a load of persimmon logs off another friend's place, a man named Frank Hill, and I never paid him for the trees. Those were easier to settle. I paid them all with a check and a letter, this after 12 or 15 years. I didn't have to face them, as I did my boss. As for friends I had hurt or betrayed prior to getting saved, I never got up the courage...
Should I sit down and check myself off against the Ten Commandments and the Sermon On The Mount, there would be much more and much worse. But...
Even along with the embarrassment of old friends discovering I wasn't always the good old boy they thought I was, I hope I have made a point. When I go into prisons, I sit and talk with men who have murdered, raped, stolen big and sinned big. Much worse than me, I might rationalize. But...
A man who stole $29 from his boss had to do some difficult time with his conscience and ask forgiveness from his Creator. A man who murdered someone in a fit of rage had to serve even harder time for his crime and, likewise, had to ask forgiveness from his Creator. Sinners both forgiven, we are now brothers -- trusting brothers. The two of us will meet in Heaven some day with a slate wiped clean by Jesus Christ...These sins, no matter how insignificant or how heinous, will never be mentioned or remembered again.
--Harlan
--Mena, AR
--Jan. 3, 2006