Turn - Max Lucado [9]
—Steve Farrar, Point Man, p. 111
“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
(2 Chronicles 7:14)
TURN #4
Charles Robertson should have turned himself in. That would have been his wisest move. Not that he would’ve been acquitted. After all, he’d just robbed a bank. He would have still gone to jail, but at least he wouldn’t have been the laughingstock of Virginia Beach.
Cash-strapped Robertson, nineteen, went to Jefferson State Bank on a Wednesday afternoon, filled out a loan application, and left. He returned within a couple of hours, not to fill out another application, but to fill up a bag. He scribbled a demand on scrap paper, explaining that he had a gun and wanted money. The teller complied and all of a sudden Robertson was holding a sack of loot.
Figuring the police were fast on their way, he dashed out the front door.
He was halfway to the car when he realized he’d left the note. Fearing it could be used as evidence, he hurried back into the bank and snatched it from the teller. He scurried out the same entrance and ran a block to his parked car. That’s when he realized his second mistake. He’d left his keys on the counter when he’d returned for the note.
“At this point,” one detective would later chuckle, “total panic set in.”
Robertson ran to a nearby fast-food restaurant and ducked into the restroom. He dislodged a ceiling tile and hid the money and the .25 caliber handgun. Scampering through alleys and creeping behind cars, he finally reached his apartment, where his roommate, who knew nothing of the robbery, greeted him with the words, “I need my car.” Robertson’s getaway vehicle was a loaner. Rather than confess to the crime and admit the bungle, the hapless robber dug himself deeper into the hole.
“Uh, uh, your car was stolen.”
“Well, I’m calling the police!”
Robertson watched in bewildered fear while the roommate reported the stolen vehicle. About twenty minutes later an officer spotted the “stolen” car a block from the recently robbed bank. Word was already on the police radio that the robber had forgotten his keys. The officer put two and two together and tried the keys on the car. They worked.
Detectives drove to the address of the person who’d reported the stolen car. There they found Robertson. He confessed, was charged with robbery, and was put in jail. No bail. No loan. No kidding.4
ROBERTSON SHOULD’VE TURNED HIMSELF IN. EVERY STEP HE TOOK WAS
A STEP IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.
A STEP HE’D LATER REGRET.
He’s not alone. Perhaps we didn’t take money, but we’ve taken advantage or taken control or taken leave of our senses and then, like Robertson, taken off. Dashing down alleys of deceit. Hiding behind buildings of progress and success, work to be done, or deadlines to be met. We’re a nation on the lam!
BUT FROM THE BEGINNING GOD HAS CALLED FOR HONESTY. HE’S NEVER DEMANDED NATIONAL PERFECTION, JUST TRUTHFULNESS.
As far back as the days of Moses, God promised: “If they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers—their treachery against me and their hostility toward me, which made me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies—then…I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land” (Leviticus 26:40—42).
Nehemiah knew the value of honesty. Upon hearing of the crumbled walls in Jerusalem, did he fault God? Did he blame heaven? Hardly.