NO TALKING HIM INTO IT
One lady said: Rushing to work, I was driving too fast and as a result was pulled over by the highway patrol. The state trooper noticed that my shirt had the name of a local high school on it. "I teach math there," I explained.
The trooper smiled, and said, "Okay, here’s a problem. A teacher is speeding down the highway at 16 m.p.h. over the limit. At $12 for every mile, plus $40 court costs, plus the rise in her insurance, what’s her total cost?"
I replied, "Taking that total, subtracting the low salary I receive, multiplying by the number of kids who hate math, then adding to that the fact that none of us would be anywhere without teachers, I’d say zero."
He handed me back my license. "Math was never my favorite subject," he admitted. "Please slow down."
What’s the point of this story? Here is one thing I would like to make of it. I am sure that lady was HOPING not to get a ticket. And she did pretty good to worm her way out of it. Better than most of us. She "hoped" for salvation from suffering in a sense.
We, too, have been caught speeding. We have been caught sinning. And by someone greater than any highway patrol officer. And he has every right to give us a ticket to jail (or hell). And there is no way in the world that we can talk Him out of it. Try as we might, our wrangling words or even our complimentary words mean little.
(Steve Shepherd "In This You Greatly Rejoice" 1/19/2009)