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Inconvenient Laws

            You have ordained Your precepts, that we are to keep them diligently. Oh that my ways may be established to keep Your statutes! Then I will not be ashamed when I look at all Your commandments. You have ordained Your precepts, that we are to keep them diligently. Oh that my ways may be established to keep Your statutes! Then I will not be ashamed when I look at all Your commandments. (Psalm 119:4-6)

           I’ve been working at the garden center for 4 months. Because of the pandemic, they have plexiglass shields along one side of each cashier’s station. They are fastened high enough that lots of plants can move back and forth without difficulty, but every once now and again, I discover that remarkable law of physics that says that while plants may pass under plexiglass, they cannot pass through plexiglass. It’s nearly as inconvenient as gravity working consistently and not only when I want it to. Equally irksome is the fact that if one eats more than one needs, the body stores that energy as fat. I’ve no doubt that you can easily come up with pet peeves about other natural laws that make your life more difficult than it needs to be. Have a good laugh over mine and yours.

          How much of our amusement about these pesky bits of uncooperative reality is embarrassment? It’s funny if it happens once, but it gets old your mind meows at you because everything you touch ends up on the floor, and other unflattering images come to mind when you do whatever it is again. Embarrassment – shame, how often do we cover them up with laughter?

          If there are natural laws that we feel embarrassed, or even ashamed, for not following, why should it surprise us that there are moral, ethical, and social laws that we should be ashamed for not following? And why do we think it’s only the laws with which we agree that we should be held accountable for breaking? 

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