We are how we act, not what we say we believe

It's gettin' to be the end of March and I still have work undone from January. Part of it is the move within the Undisclosed Location to the Teeny Tiny Law Office. Part of it is the parade of domestic crises (find and read the "family way" posts, if you're really curious). We're supposed to be empty nesters, but we have more people at home recently on weekend nights than we've had since the kids began to drive.

More, perhaps, on this weekend's festivities as the week goes on and my workload permits. For now, though, I want to tell you a story I heard in a sermon yesterday that struck me as particularly good....

The cop saw it all.

He was approaching a busy intersection in the city and the light controlling his direction of travel had just changed from green to yellow. The cop was the third car in line.

In a lightning calculation that was the product of both instinct and experience, the cop decided that he had no beef if the first car in line entered the intersection. He had just concluded that he probably would have also let the second car, a minivan, get through without pulling it over when he realized the first car was stopping, just as the Rules of the Road require.

The minivan almost rear-ended the first car. After successfully screeching to a halt, the woman driving the van began honking. The cop could see her gesticulating urgently in the direction of the first car, finishing with the two-handed, one-finger Freeway Salute. It was a nice spring day, and the cop's windows were down. The windows were down in the minivan, too, and the gentle spring zephyr was sullied by the woman's shrieking profanities.

That was enough for the cop. He flipped on his lights and intercom and told the woman to step out of the car with her hands clearly visible.

A couple of hours later, back at the station, a crestfallen police officer apologized to the woman as he let her go. "I saw the bumper stickers on your van," he said, "the one that said 'Choose LIFE,' and the one that said, 'Follow Me to Church,' and the other one that said, 'What Would Jesus Do?' And I saw your little metal Christian Fish symbol, too. And then I saw what you did and heard what you said and I thought you must have stolen that van.

"I'm sorry to say I was mistaken."