I am combining Commandments 8 and 9, which are, “You shall not steal” and “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” Or easily said, “Don’t lie”!This piece couldn’t be written without including both someone stealing, and then the lies of denial.
There’s a little story my mother told me when I was a very small girl. The things I tried to hide from my mother never quite worked out. There was the time I wanted to sniff the cigarette lighter that came standard on the cars in those days. I was told that I should never, ever touch it, however the temptation was too great as I found myself alone in the car for a few minutes, my little fingers itched to push it in and see what happened, I reached and pushed it and in a few minutes it popped out, I took it out and it glowed red and for some reason I put it to my nose to sniff it and got the surprise of my life when my little nose sizzled! I was only four-years old and trying to hide your face from my mother’s blue eagle-sharp eyes was no easy task, I failed, she saw. Then there was the time I decided to iron my dad’s stack of handkerchiefs (yes in those days he carried them and used several during the course of a heated sermon) on the top of the dirty-clothes basket, which had a plastic top. I had been told not to touch the iron but I was sure that one she saw the wonderful job I had done on his handkerchiefs all would be forgiven, it wasn’t because the plastic caught on fire and it was nearly a tragedy! I had already had a run-in with the iron when she was ironing and I kept playing dare as the iron was coming down from her quick strokes across wrinkled material to rest while she sprinkled more water from the Pepsi bottle on it. After being warned to stop doing that she decided to teach me a lesson and grazed my knuckles with the iron. There are many more infractions of parental law but for times sake I will give you the story she told me.
There was a little girl who wanted a doll more than anything in the world. Her father was a poor farmer and didn’t have the money to buy one of the pretty dolls she had seen at the grocery store down the lane so with the help of his wife they made a doll from the cloth from the flour sack shaped and filled with seeds and gave it to her for Christmas. She was as proud of that doll as if it had come from the store and carried it everywhere with her. He brother was jealous that she had something she loved so much, there were things he had wanted and didn’t get, why should she have that doll? So he took the doll and buried it. The little girl cried and looked for her doll but couldn’t find it anywhere. Of course her brother denied knowing anything about it. The winter snows and then the spring rains came and as the weather warmed the girl’s mother was out hanging clothes out to dry, something caught her eye in the yard and as she got closer she saw that there were little sprouts coming up with flowers and that little garden was in the shape of the doll.
(Parenthetical statement: I read a statement that said, “They thought they buried me, they didn’t know I was a seed”)
The moral of the story according to mother was actually a scripture, “Be sure your sin will find you out.” Numbers 32:23
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