“Father in heaven, please help me to see sin the way you see it.”
I was captured in a cycle of rushed prayer, bible skimming, and internet addiction, so to combat the addiction, we recently exchanged our iPhones for basic phones. However, the basic phones had WiFi hotspot capability. My wife and children were in Tennessee for Christmas while I stayed in Arkansas to work. I hooked my laptop to the hotspot and wiped out our high-speed data Friday night watching YouTube comedy to dull the pain, and Sabbath morning I was reading Star Wars spoilers. I still hurt.
A loud thud echoed from the main part of the house. I tossed the laptop aside and scrambled from bed, knowing the sound was a hard collision by a medium to large bird with one of our windows. I once occupied a place with wall to wall windows, and everything from hummingbirds to piliated woodpeckers knocked themselves senseless on that glass, so the sound is familiar. It just didn’t seem right to leave the dazed bird at the mercy of any predators who might swoop in for an easy meal. I started in the living room but saw nothing along the ground below the windows. I tried to see from the dining room windows but couldn’t see the ground right against the house, so, it seemed, I must brave the cold. As I made my way to the corner of the house, I spotted her, laying on her side, her eyes closed. Even as I bent to pick her up, I knew she was gone. Her tail flicked once at my touch, a spark of hope kindled in my heart, but then her eyes slid slowly to the half open position of death. I stroked her reddish green feathers, choking on the lump in my throat. “The wages of sin is death…”
I carried the cardinal out behind the pool and laid her where some scavenger could collect an easy meal and returned to the Star Wars spoilers. Her death ate at me, however, for she was innocent. I was the one in sin, the addict, the idolater. I was the one who should have died. Just like the creature that died so that Adam and Eve could have coats of skin in Genesis, the innocent died that the guilty might live. How was this fair? I put away the computer and went to church.
A few days passed as I wrestled with the wages of sin. One night I couldn’t sleep, so after a couple hours of trying, I went to my knees beside the bed and began to pray. As I contemplated death, my mind turned to Christ dying on the cross, and how much He suffered. God loathed sin so much His own Son died because of it. The thought struck me: “I did that.” At first it didn’t really register, just tickled the back of my brain, lines from the old Ray Boltz song “The Hammer” surfacing, but my mind latched onto it, and I found myself in the scene, helping bind Christ to the cross, and drive the nails through His flesh. “I did that.” How could I do that? What had He ever done to me that I would do that to Him? “I did that. I put Him there.” Grief clutched me, fiercer than any I’ve ever felt. “My God, how could I?” I doubled over in agony. The weight of the crime came crashing down on me. How could I? He was so kind and loving and innocent, and I put Him up there with my sin as surely as if I nailed Him there with my own two hands. It felt like a large clamp was squeezing my head just behind my temples. Tears flooded my cheeks. “I’m sorry. My God, I’m sorry. I did that.” I could hardly breath.
My folks helped us consolidate a bunch of debt in 2016 (over $18,000), and we paid for a while, but ran into trouble, and ceased paying when the balance was $17,195. During this time of self-induced trouble, our house was foreclosed on (the VA forced the bank to wait while we worked out the details to short sell the place), we sold two vehicles, but our car was repossessed. I took a job in another city, and my family moved in with my in-laws while I spent 2 months of living in an $800 Saturn Vue. The separation was more than we could stand, so we took a job where we could live in the company office. In 2018 human help put us in a nice house we hoped to eventually buy, yet by August 2019, it was obvious we would not be able to purchase the property, and our financial situation was dire. I wrote about the journey in “Conditioned to Complain” published here in March 2020.
Living on the budget and rolling anything extra into the debt journey kept snowballing. Our tax return from 2019 allowed me to knock out many of the smaller debts. Then we got the COVID stimulus and paid down more of our debt. Then the house we were supposed to buy in Hohenwald sold, and the owners gave us half of their profit for our help with the project. This paid off all our debt except what I owed my parents for consolidating our debt in 2016. When we went on the budget, I included a small payment to them in the figures, and by July, we had knocked nearly $1200 off the balance we owed them. The paychecks weren’t as fat as they had been before the COVID hit, so I wasn’t paying down as fast as I liked, but we were making headway.
In July, I turned a year older, and my folks asked, “What would you like for your birthday?”
We’ve been shedding stuff for nearly a year (and I was shedding stuff for several years prior to that), so I couldn’t think of anything they can give me that I needed. After a moment’s thought I said, “A little help with the debt.” I was thinking knock $100 off the balance, as that has been a typical birthday gift amount in years prior.
“Let Mom and me talk about it,” my Dad said.
It was a workday, my family was yet again gone to Tennessee to help with a mission project, so shortly after the phone call concluded, I headed into work and basically forgot about it. In the army at my first unit, birthdays were celebrated by either getting thrown into the nastiest water they could find, or by getting soaked with clean water and a bag of flour dumped over one’s head. I saw that a few days before I turned 30, and vowed I would never have, and never speak of my birthday. My second unit would pin the person down, expose their belly, and slap it the number of years old the person was (called “Pink belly”). This further confirmed to me that I did not have a birthday, nor did I want to have a birthday, so sometime about June my year started going up, and sometime in August it finished going up, and never was my birthday mentioned. They could have looked it up, if they wanted, but I surely wasn’t going to remind them of the day. After six years of not having a birthday, well, seven years later I still don’t make a big deal out of it.
At the end of the workday, one of my coworkers needed a ride home. After I dropped him off, I headed east, planning to go out to eat, but as I drove, my conscience and Dave Ramsey’s words bothered me; “If you’re in debt, the only time you should see the inside of a restaurant is if you work there.” I had food at home. I forsook my plans to go out, and exited the highway much sooner than I expected, going to the house where food pantry chow became my supper.
I regretted my choice to be good as I struggled with loneliness and depression. My phone rang. I checked the caller ID, saw it was my mom, and answered. Both my parents were on the line and my dad spoke, “We’ve talked about your request. Jesus has forgiven me so very much, so we have decided to forgive you all that you owe us.”
Our tight budget forced us to go to church local, although we had started attending elsewhere because the local church was not home. The pastor once led a rough life. “My sin nailed Jesus to the cross as surely as if I wielded the hammer. When He said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’, He was praying for me.”
Light flooded my mind like rays from the sun as it cracks the horizon. I put Him there by my sin as surely as if I wielded the hammer, yet He prayed for me, pleaded for forgiveness for me. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Tears came to my eyes. Oh, undeserved and unmerited love, that while Christ endured the most humiliating and painful death the Roman empire could inflict, He prayed for forgiveness for those of us who put Him there, who caused His pain.
“It would be well for us to spend a thoughtful hour each day in contemplation of the life of Christ. We should take it point by point, and let the imagination grasp each scene, especially the closing ones. As we thus dwell upon His great sacrifice for us, our confidence in Him will be more constant, our love will be quickened, and we shall be more deeply imbued with His spirit. If we would be saved at last, we must learn the lesson of penitence and humiliation at the foot of the cross” (DA 83.4 emphasis added).
It wasn’t until that thoughtful hour was spent, that I saw my place in Christ’s crucifixion, that I could see that He prayed for my forgiveness while He was placed on the cross. When my debt was forgiven, I didn’t promptly run out and borrow more money. I was so grateful that burden was removed, and that I could finish cleaning up the mess I made when I felt Compelled. To delve into debt again would be a slap in the face to those who forgave me so much. Yet how lightly esteemed is Christ’s sacrifice on our part that we would keep tampering with sin. How can we presume that we can play with something so terrible that it cost the Son of God His life? He said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” The inverse of that would be, “If you hate Me, keep sinning.”
We gave our car to my In-Laws after theirs died at the very beginning of our debt free journey. For a year now we’ve only had one vehicle, a 2001 Chevrolet Suburban. That vehicle has been a huge blessing (pun intended), but the fuel economy hurts, and I work 30 miles from home, so we go through a tank a fuel in less than a week. While saving $70 a month in insurance on a second vehicle is nice, I could save that much in fuel by driving a more economical vehicle and have cheaper maintenance costs (if I pick the right car). Since paying off our debt, our situation is unstable, and we haven’t saved the money we hoped to save. In passing I’ve looked at vehicles for sale, but nothing serious because of the lack of resources. The week before Thanksgiving I worked on a 2004 Buick LeSabre that had transmission issues, and when I pulled the transmission pan, I found a lot of very fine metal, indicating that the transmission was stressed. I gave the owner three options, either drive it until it fails, replace the pressure control solenoid and filter, or replace the transmission. She chose option 4 and traded it in. Well, knowing the issues, I was more than happy to tackle the project, but I had no cash. The dealership would let me have the car interest free and take the money out of my paychecks but that meant $1600 in debt.
I struggled, going around and around with the desire for a more economical car against the fact that to get this one would mean debt, and I had no idea how long the transmission would last, or how much it would cost to fix when it went out. As I discussed the vehicle with my wife, my cell phone fell off the stool it was sitting on and shattered on the concrete floor. Now cut off from her, I told God about the struggle I was having. A few minutes later the service advisor approached. “You know that Buick? You need to put it back together because they sold it.”
Praise God for providing a way out of the temptation. I put it back together and parked it outside. Struggling with my emotions, I poured out my frustration and selfish spirit to God, choosing to thank and praise Him for saving me from myself. Finally, I shut myself in the tool room and poured out my heart, in the old cliché, gave God the full broadside. By the time I was done praying, I knew He still had my best interest at heart, and that I could trust Him.
Two days before Thanksgiving, we started a short-term lease on a small house on two acres much closer to work. We have three months to get it up to VA standards so we can purchase it. The following day my folks came to visit, bringing some excess appliances and furniture to share with us, all things we needed since there were no appliances in the house. As we sat around the dining room table for lunch, we shared things we were thankful for this year. For me, hands down, flat out, no bones about it, being debt free is what I’m thankful for this year. My relationship with my folks was different, for the first time in years, the debt to them wasn’t hanging over my head. I shared freely my financial wins and struggles because I no longer owed them anything. As I fell into bed that evening (because we had a Wickham working holiday) I thought about how different this holiday was from the previous ones over the last four years. Without the tension because of the debt, I had peace with them.
When God forgives us, we have peace with Him as well. Being at peace with Him isn’t a ticket to run out and rack up more debt. Part of our peace is dying to self, no longer serving the lusts of the flesh, but bringing these into submission to Him. We don’t even have to do this of our own power, for He supplies the way out of temptation, even selling the tempting car if need be to help us overcome. Christ will forever bear in His flesh the marks of our salvation. We will forever see what we caused Him to suffer, but in obtaining those marks, He earned the right to stamp over our account, “Forgiven in full”.
Russell Wickham seeks the Lord with all his heart (Jeremiah 29:12).