One cannot disconnect the New Testament from the Old Testament or one verse from another. It comes to life in our hearts and minds by the Holy Spirit of God in us only as we embrace it in its entirety and begin living obediently to God in it.
I have been coming gradually to that conclusion most of my life. In my childhood I studied the Word of God in Sunday School and in youth activities, doing “sword drills” to find and memorize scripture texts. They lived in the recesses of my soul even during years when I didn’t recall them or seek to apply them to my life. However, eventually, in the fullness of God’s timing and according to His plan for my life, God began percolating His Living Water through the layers of rock and sand and silt in my soul and what came to the surface once again was a hunger and thirst to live those Words.
Never was it more clear to me than in an incident involving a credit card email notification that my card had been used in a particular pharmacy. While I had used that store in the past for my own prescriptions, it had been nearly a year since I had done so. I called that pharmacy I’d previously used, but they had no record of the charge. Puzzled, I called all its affiliated stores in my area to see if the charge was for something other than medications in a different store. There was no record of the charge locally. Finally, I was given a corporate number to call to inquire about the source of the charge. When I was told the town in which it occurred, i knew of only one person who would have known about my previous history of charges in stores of that chain. I told the corporate hotline I knew only one person in that town and I had, in fact, paid for that person’s medication on one or possibly two occasions early in the current year. But my card was in my possession and I had not been in that town at their store. I was referred to the manager of the store in that town. But before I could call, I received a call from the manager of that out of town store, who asked me about my report of potential fraud use of my card. In the meantime I had texted the individual in that town and asked if that store was where scripts were purchased and why they had charged to my credit card. I received a text back quickly from the individual stating that was the store where her scripts were purchased but she had no idea why my card would have been used. But she would go there after work and straighten it out.
When the store manager called I reported my conversation with the person whose script had been paid on my card and that it would be cleared up after work by her. It appeared that because my card had once been used to purchase a script for her, it was somehow in their file and had been inadvertently charged. I granted the benefit of the doubt and waited for it to be resolved before having to call my credit card company.
In a few minutes the store manager called back and said her access only went back 90 days, but the card had been charged three times in that period. Now I was alarmed. This was not a one-off error, this was a pattern of abusing my card. The store manager could not go back any further than 90 days but suggested I contact my card company to pull all charges from that location.
I had known of this person’s past history and though she was likely capable of deception, credit card fraud was not something I would have expected. I called someone who knew her well to determine if she had lapsed back into old behaviors and was told absolutely not. She was working conscientiously, had made substantive life changes, was not in conflict with her family any longer, but was doing the things she had said she had wanted to do in her restored life. So I called the pharmacy manager and asked her to have the person call me from the store when she got there after work. Actually, the call came from the pharmacy at lunch. The customer was there to pay the disputed charge, but my credit card could not be credited unless I was there in the store. The manager told her I had been made aware of the other charges and was initiating an investigation. The store would only give the records to the sheriff’s department. I asked the store manager the total amount of money involved that she could document. It came to about $60. I asked her if it was possible that the pharmacy had erred in picking up my card number because of it having been used to pay for a script previously. She acknowledged it was possible. The customer has insurance so we were only dealing with a deductible that was being charged to my card. I spoke to the lady again. Now she sounded puzzled and truly at a loss. She said she had not been asked to pay a deductible and had not realized it was going to my card. She offered to drive to me and pay whatever was owed.
In that moment I had a choice…..prosecute or trust it was a simple error. The Lord spoke to my heart, “You hold the stone.” It was a reminder that I could act out of the letter of the law, file charges and let the sheriff’s department sort it out, potentially resulting in credit card fraud to this person . Or I could hold the pharmacy liable and file a case against them with the possibility someone could be fired for carelessly storing and using a card in the system with someone else’s name and an out of town address. Either would be understandable from the standpoint of man’s laws. I asked the pharmacy manager, “What would you do.” She nervously said, “I can’t say anything. You do what you need to do. But you probably need to review your charges for the last year at our stores and see whose scripts they were used for.” I already knew what I intended to do.
I asked the manager if my card number was scrubbed from their system and no longer associated with her prescription record. It was, she said. I spoke to the young lady again and told her I had already spoken to someone else in a position to know whether or not she was continuing in recovery and they had said she was. So I was allowing for the possibility it was an error that had come about not through intent of anyone but by oversight and the Spirit of the law suggested we had benefitted from seeing how harmlessly something potentially criminal can happen without awareness or intention or malice being present. I was comfortable I could overlook it, be at peace, and trust that it wouldn’t happen again.
I teach our discipleship students the necessity of recognizing the value and appropriate use of both the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, and operating as well as one possibly can under the one that is best applied in the moment according to God’s will. This goes for the Law of God as well as for the laws of man. I don’t always do it well. But I trust God to bring good out of whatever happens….. I am only called to make my best effort at living out the Spirit of God’s Law and under the laws of man in a conscionable way and to trust God to sort out what’s just and merciful in the consequences that result from my best effort at the time. The Way is simple, but rarely easy.
God had said to me, “You hold the stone.” The choice was mine. Which law applied and how was I to work it out for God’s glory, my good, and others’ gain? Stones may be thrown at offenders accused under the law. They may also be used to slay giants, to cast as lots for a fateful decision, dropped at our feet leaving the decision to God, or rolled away from tombs to reveal the risen Christ.
Micah 6:8- “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”