No. 44
From Wendy Howard [Editor of Despatch magazine], Sunshine Coast, Qld, Australia.
Access Online  http://www.despatch.cth.com.au/Main/tabco_main

We lived near a highway when I was a young girl.
Our house was close to a hill.
It was hard for the trucks and cars to get up !
One day a heavily loaded truck was trying to struggle up the hill.
It couldn’t quite make it. And the big load of boxes on it moved to one side.
The truck toppled over when the boxes moved.
And the truck ended up on its side in the gutter! It made a nasty crash too!

That truck was packed with the most beautiful pears in boxes.
The pears spilled all over the grass beside the road.
And down the footpath.
I saw those pears, but did not touch them.
Then other people came along and they began to pick up pears and eat them!
The truck driver tried to growl at them, but no one listened.
People told other people in nearby houses.
And they came out and not only ate pears
but they brought clothes baskets to gather them up.
I ran home to tell my parents about the pears that were free.
They rushed up the hill.

When we got to the truck an amazing sight met our eyes.
Our neighbours were taking the boxes of pears
off the truck and were taking them home!
Well, we thought that if they could have free pears then so could we.
So our family took away a box of free pears.
No one was stopping us.
There was only the driver sitting on the grass holding his head
and saying nothing now.
My mum made delicious pear ginger jam out of the fruit.
I had a lot of raw ones to eat as well.

That was a piece of luck, wasn’t it?
But wait a minute! Wasn’t that stealing?
Everyone was doing it, no one complained.
Why shouldn’t we have free pears too?
What about the poor owner of the pears who was taking them to market?
He would have to go home to his family with no money, and a broken truck.
Was it stealing? Of course it was.
But you might say, everyone was doing it.
And the pears were free.
But they weren’t ours to take!
Our family wasn’t a Christian one then.
We still should have known better.
Dad was a bit worried about “the poor bloke” but gave in too.
Everyone was doing it!

Just because everyone does something doesn’t make it right.
Lots of kids and adults do things these days which are terribly wrong.
God’s Word says we are not to do them.
But everyone does those things any way.
Does that make it right? No way.
The truth about what is right and what is wrong
is not found in how many other people do it.
People say today that we have a per-miss-ive society.
They mean that we are allowed to do things that are wrong,
because most people say is it OK.
Christians, however,
know that God’s Word tells us what is right and what is wrong.
We must obey Him, not sinful people.
Even when they make laws to say it is OK.

Ethics  and morals are decided by God in His Word, not by society around us.
We cannot make up our own sets of rules on how we will behave either.
Some people live by the rule that if it feels good to themselves, it is OK to do something.
They excuse sex outside marriage, killing unborn babies, getting drunk and horrible things because it feels good or right to themselves!
No, the only way to know right and wrong is to read God’s word and obey IT!
It felt great to have free pears and pear jam. But taking those pears was WRONG, no matter what other people were doing.
That is the truth about the matter. Never give in to pressure.
Jesus said