Casting the Die

I’m not one to be overly concerned about my wardrobe. Anyone who sees me regularly knows I give off a borderline homeless vibe when it comes to what I wear because at my age, comfort trumps style. There’s no one I feel the need to try and impress; I haven’t since I was eleven, and it was the first day of Junior High. I tucked my polyester polo into my pinstriped slacks, and even wore my grandpa’s Seiko wristwatch, because, you know, new school, first impressions, and whatnot.

This morning I grabbed a shirt out of the closet, put it on, and even after trying to stretch it out, it was ill-fitting. Maybe the dryer shrunk it, perhaps it’s the lockdown diet, but whatever the cause, the shirt just didn’t feel comfortable, so I threw it back in the closet and grabbed another one that did.

Some things are as easy to remedy as that. Changing course, walking back a decision is as easy as taking off one shirt and putting on another. There are, however, things in life that aren’t as easy to remedy as all that, and the longer it takes to try and change course, the harder it becomes.

If you find yourself standing in wet cement, you’ve got a good day to decide to step out of it and clean your shoes off before you have to lose a piece of yourself to escape it; if it’s quick-drying cement, it’s closer to twenty minutes.

Unless someone just doesn’t know what it is or understand what it does, no one wallows in wet cement in the off chance that the hardening process will not occur as it has every other time it has been poured. Predictable outcomes are predictable for a reason. When you watch a YouTube clip of someone sticking a fork into an electrical outlet, you know what’s about to happen. The only thing you have yet to discover is if the individual survives the ordeal.

If you haven’t heard, there’s a hair salon owner that was sentenced to seven days in jail for not adhering to the lockdown orders in Texas of all places. Although that’s troubling enough on its own, this morning, I read through the transcript of the exchange between the judge and the salon owner, and that’s when my stomach started churning. I’d read eerily similar words in interrogation transcripts made public between suspected Christians and Securitate officials in Romania during the Communist regime.

Just say you’re sorry, and we can make all this go away. Just admit that what you did was selfish and wrong and caused harm to the greater good. Promise you won’t ever do it again, and you can go home to your kids today. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to go home to your kids and hug them? Fall in line, and your life can return to a semblance of normalcy with the snap of a finger. Kneel, submit, obey, or suffer the consequences!

We talk about standing on principle and being principled people until it costs us something to do it. I don’t know how many folks would have taken the jail time rather than apologizing for as she put it, feeding her kids, as this salon owner did, but I’d wager the numbers would shock and disappoint.

Many things are becoming evident during this entire ordeal, some of which are foreshadowing a not so distant future for Christians, and those who believe that freedom is not just some expendable thing.

We still have time to step out of the cement before it hardens. If we fail to do so, it will take buzz saws, tourniquets, and missing limbs to do what could have been done by taking a few steps in the right direction.

Some people are willing to take the gamble that this is the one time in recorded history when the cement will not harden; I, for one, am not. I’ve seen it play out one too many times to doubt that the cement will do what it’s always done. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.