That's Not Really Stealing? 9/20/2017

Good Morning,

Although I am away from home I was smart enough to pack some Door County Chocolate Cherry Coffee along to make mornings a little more like home.

I promised last week that I would finish off the month of September with some basic God given principles for us to live by, thus reducing the confusion of the world! Or at least a few of us.

Exodus 20:15New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁵ “You shall not steal.





Many years ago I was invited to eat a hot dog in a home where I was changing out a hot water heater for a family. This family was a friend of a friend and I was happy to help. The work took a little longer that I had thought and my host decided to grill up some hot dogs to feed his family and the plumber. They handed me a plate and directed me to a basket with condiments. There were ketchup, mustard and relish packets in the basket. I was expecting bottles of ketchup and mustard instead of the packets that were noticeably from a local burger establishment. I mentioned to the family that they sure had enough ketchup. They all laughed and said, "whenever we go there, all of us take four or five extra packets to bring home. We do pretty well on taco sauce too".

I know a lot of people who believe that the pens at work are to be taken home. They believe these pens to be a perk for working. They don't see them as company property. We view stealing as someone who robs a bank or takes a car, not the great ketchup bandits of the world.

What do we teach our kids? Even these small acts of larceny are stealing. So when the teenager lifts a pair of sunglasses from the over priced boutique and gets caught, we nail him or her to an ant hill and put honey on her ears. But we don't lay down next to her and say', "smear some honey on my ears too, I taught you how to steal".

Stealing is stealing. Put that in the playbook of life and chew on it. No matter the amount, stealing is wrong. How much of a work break do we take? We might get fifteen minutes but we stretch it to twenty. If we do that by five minutes each day we have stolen 25 minutes of pay for doing nothing. We rob our employer. But we claim that it isn't stealing. We need to be clear on this. There really isn't a gray area to stand on.

Tomorrow we tackle jealousy.

Marty