Gavels Down

I've constructed a world where everything fits nicely into carefully compartmentalized criticisms. I know what's wrong with you sometimes before I even know your name. I see your faults before I see your pain, and I draw conclusions with a permanent marker, while writing the hope of Christ in disappearing ink.
But, the sad truth is I'm right....my impressions usually are as bad as they appear, and my track record for spotting sin is flawless. I've got a knack for identifying evil, and a reputation for recognizing rebellion. In the past I have taken great pride in my ability to sift through the sands of someones sorrow just to find the skeletons hanging in their closet. Like a skilled archeologist I follow the trail of past mistakes, I sweep away the sentimental sediment that "covers up" our situations; just so I can find the lifeless bones that lay buried underneath surface-level semblance. But for all that archeology has ever taught us about who we are...it has never unearthed who we could be. For all the death that is has discovered it has never produced a single life....nor does it care to. It is not concerned with life outside of exposing the dry bones of yesterday.
I am that archeologist, digging up dirt on all that I encounter. I am that juryman handing down verdict, and that judge wielding a gavel with the precision of a master marksman. In all my cases closed....have I ever left a heart opened. Has anyone found life in my delivering of "life" sentences. In being correct in my stereotypes has any change come to the corrupt? Even in calling sin what it is, it still IS.
So I say gavels down, and crosses up. Just like a physician cannot treat a disease he has not diagnosed....he also fails if he diagnoses a disease he refuses to treat. In my youth G.I. Joe taught me that "knowing is half the battle", but I missed that acting on that knowledge was the other. Because to see sin just takes eyes, but to "see to" someones freedom takes heart. Describing the dead is for coroners, describing the life is for Christians. Pronouncing death is not our calling, but speaking resurrection is....gavels down....gavels down.


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