Shelburne: Have the deuces gone wild?
Back when our calendars told us the date was 02-22-2022, did you think for a moment that the deuces had gone wild?
The truth is that we don’t have to go to the Las Vegas or Cherokee casinos for the deuces to take on special meaning. At least since the day when God created Eve, our planet has been a world of pairs.
You don’t have to live in the shadow of Mt. Everest to know that reality contains an up and a down, a high and a low.
You don’t have to swim the Pacific to discover that life contains a near and a far.
Anyone with a thermometer or a bare body can detect that there’s a hot and a cold.
Every single day when the sun goes up or down (unless we live in Alaska during the winter) we get reminded to expect light and darkness.
Life and death, happy or sad, old or young, right or wrong, weak or strong, rich or poor—the list of duos that describe human existence is almost endless. But the bipolar terms that describe our character and our behavior may be the ones that matter most.
How old were you before your parents taught you the difference between good and bad? How much Bible did you have to read before you could tell sin from righteousness, the “shalls” from the “shall nots”?
We prove that we do know right from wrong when we sneak around and try to hide our less-than-admirable behavior. Years ago the local banker who wound up in prison tried hard to conceal the fact that the Krugerrand coins he had stashed in his vault were fake. Obviously, his deceptive tactics didn’t work. Not any more than the numbskull lies my uncle told to my aunt to make her think he was hauling cattle in a distant county when, in fact, he was in bed with a lover on the other side of town. Like those men and a multitude like them, all of us know right from wrong, but far too many of us stray across that line anyway.
When Jesus said, “Not my will, but Thine be done,” he verbalized the two options all of us face. Repeatedly. Every day. The deuces indeed are wild. How we handle them will determine whether we win the game.
Gene Shelburne is pastor emeritus of the Anna Street Church of Christ, 2310 Anna St. Contact him at GeneShel@aol.com, or get his books and magazines at www.christianappeal.com. His column has run on the Faith page for more than three decades.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Shelburne: Have the deuces gone wild?
