I’m Doug Apple...and my heart is on fire. (Luke 24:32)
Why is Home Depot on lockdown?
I just wanted to run in, buy a new weed eater, and go home.
But that’s not how it works these days. Why? Because Home Depot is on lockdown.
What I mean is, some of their stuff is now literally chained up behind bars right there on the shelf.
Am I in one of those big cities with looters and riots? Hardly. I’m in sleepy Tallahassee, Florida. And yet here I am, looking at weed eaters, not Rolex watches, chained behind bars. I will have to wander around the store and find an employee to unchain it for me.
Now why would they do this? Because of theft, of course. They didn’t want to do it. It’s a pain for them, and a pain for their customers. They wouldn’t have done it if they didn’t have to.
That means the theft was getting so bad that they had to invest in anti-theft measures, and that makes me sad.
Now let’s talk about our local Walmart. When was the last time you went in to buy shaving cream? Guess what. It’s locked up, too. Shaving cream!
Walmart didn’t want to do that. How many customers just said, “Forget it. I’ll order it from Amazon before I’ll track down an employee to unlock the shaving cream.”
And don’t think you are going to walk down the makeup aisle at Walmart without being recorded on high definition security cameras. Why would they invest so much money to record you in the makeup aisle? They didn’t want to. They had to because so much of it was being stolen.
Last Christmas I talked to a security guard at Walmart who was standing near a back door, an emergency door. He didn’t really look at me while we talked, because his eyes were scanning the people around me. I asked him how it was going and he vented a little. He said, “You know we have about 3,000 people in the store right now.” No, I hadn’t even thought about it, but wow, that’s a small town.
He said, “And these people don’t realize how much theft hurts everything. Everyone has to pay more because a few people just won’t be honest.”
I said, “Why are you standing back here where there aren’t as many people?”
He said, “Because believe it or not, people will grab items and run out this back door. They’ll even try to run right past me just to steal something. I have to chase them down.”
This was a big man. I would not have wanted to test him, but apparently others were willing to.
Now let’s look at one thing he said. “These people don’t realize how much theft hurts everything.”
Of course, when people steal, they aren’t thinking about its impact on everyone else. They just want to have something without paying for it. And there’s a certain thrill about getting away with the big heist. Yes, your big shaving cream heist.
Why is this happening? Because more and more people are willing to steal.
Why would that be? Let’s look at the big picture.
Almost everyone in the history of the world knows that stealing is wrong. It’s a universal concept. No one wants their stuff stolen from them, and everyone whose stuff is stolen cries “foul!”
Many people believe that God created the world, and that He created it to work in a certain way, AND, important for this discussion, God is the policeman and judge of His creation.
The God of the Bible says that we will reap what we sow. What we do to others will be done to us. Some call that karma, what comes around goes around. And we who believe in God believe that God Himself enforces these rules. He makes sure that they work just as He says.
With that in mind, you don’t want to steal because if you do, God is going to make sure it goes badly for you. And that’s true whether you get caught by the human authorities or not. If you dart out of Walmart with your stolen shaving cream, and the big security guard doesn’t catch you, it doesn’t matter. You are already caught by the God of the universe and He is going to make sure that you reap what you sow.
If you are paying attention, you see that it really does work that way.
But again, why is theft increasing, even if the thief reaps what he sows?
I think it is because more people don’t believe in God, don’t believe He is watching, don’t believe it will come back to bite them, and think if they don’t get caught, they are actually ahead in the game.
If you take Creator God out of the equation, and you think our life here is a random chance, then just living for today, grabbing what you can and making a run for it might make sense.
But of course stealing still doesn’t make sense. Look at all the stores that are closing entirely in certain cities because of theft. The idiot thieves can’t even go in and steal anymore because their idiocy killed the whole store. And all the honest shoppers lost a good store, too. And the business is hurt by having fewer stores to sell their wares. And there are fewer jobs in those neighborhoods, meaning more poverty.
Stealing literally hurts everyone, and most especially the thief.
Because God IS real. He really IS watching. And He really IS enforcing the laws of the universe He created. The thief really WILL reap he sows. It really WILL come around to bite him in the end. And that’s bad for him, and it’s bad for all of us because we need every person doing their best to make this society the best it can be for all of us.
I’ll close with these powerful words from Ephesians 4:28, “Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need.”
Amen.
May God bless you today.
I’m Doug Apple.
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