Before the Judge

This morning I woke up at 7:15, rolled out of bed, and drove down to the Salt Lake City Justice Court with Mary, the owner of Jade Market. I wish we were getting together for breakfast or something, but alas, we had a court date. I mentioned in a previous post that I needed prayer for this morning but didn't really go into a lot of detail. Here's a little context: I started working at the Jade in June; two weeks into the job, a customer came in and bought a six-pack. I asked for his id, and glancing down, saw that his birthday was 1993. It completely slipped my mind to check the month and hey, going by the year alone this guy was old enough to buy alcohol. Interestingly enough, as I was doing the transaction, I felt like the Holy Spirit was telling me to check his id again but in the moment, I let the feeling pass. He walked out, and before you knew it, in walked in two undercover ATF people. They told me that I had just sold to a minor, and my mouth dropped and I stood there stunned. They proceeded to take a picture, fingerprint me, and wrote out a citation. The guy that I had sold the alcohol to was working for them, probably making $15 an hour or something. Anyways, my heart sank and my coworker told me that I would probably get a $300 fine or something along those lines in addition to community service.

 Flash forward to this morning and Mary and I sat in a court along with other people who had committed petty crimes and misdemeanors and after what seemed like forever, my name was called and I walked up to the stand before the judge. To the side were the city prosecutors and one of them stood up and told me that if I pled guilty, the consequences would be a $905 fine. When he said that, my heart dropped. During this entire time, I became overwhelmed with thoughts of what it would be like to stand before God and have a list of sins that I could possibly not repay. It's true, at that moment when I stood before Judge Baxter, my heart sank because I was experiencing in a very real way the consequences of my actions (even though they were in no way intentional). I became overwhelmed with emotions, and couldn't hold back tears. I stood there and asked Judge Baxter if I could explain my circumstances, going on about how I was a student who had recently started the job and how selling alcohol products was new to me. I told him I was already volunteering at a free health clinic and that not looking at the month on the id was a mistake that would never happen. 

At that moment, the prosecutor stood up, and told the judge that they had reconsidered and that they would drop the fine down to $600 and that half of that could be repaid by doing 30 hours of community service at the clinic where I'm already volunteering. The remaining $300 was to be paid out of my pocket. The judge agreed that this was appropriate, considering my circumstances. Ultimately, $600 had been expunged and at that moment, I was a recipient of mercy.

The consequences of certain actions require monetary payment, most likely community service and maybe a bad record. The consequences of sin before a Holy God required something more and that something more wasn't something that I could just scrounge up out of my wallet. The consequences of my sin required that I die and experience eternal separation from God. Just like mercy and grace was given to me at today's court appearance, God gave his Son to die for me in my place. I cannot grasp the enormity of this but I do believe that today's experience gave me a firsthand glimpse of God's love and grace. 

As Mary and I walked out of the courtroom, she turned to me and told me that she would pay for the remainder of the fine. All of a sudden, I went from having a debt of almost a thousand dollars to nothing. Today, I was lavished with reminders of how good God is to me and how he is with me, taking care of every crazy incident that seems to fall into my lap. 

Anyways, I'm now pretty much a Nazi (think soup Nazi from Seinfeld haha) when it comes to checking people's id. I don't care if they give me sass - I'm definitely not going to go through this again in my life.

God is good, and he takes care of those who trust in Him. He is active, moving the hearts of man - he is supreme over all things and rules over earthly figures of authority.