Deacons Beacon
DEACONS BEACON
Tax Time
Nobody gets pleasure from paying taxes. We have an old saying to the effect that there are only two certainties in life and they are death and taxes. Try as we may, we can’t avoid paying taxes. April 15 isn’t exactly the happiest day of the year for many Americans. We often lament “It wouldn’t be so bad if the government didn’t waste so much of our hard earned tax money on useless things.”
But there is another way to look at taxes. They are essential if we are to keep our freedom.
Our Armed Forces protect the freedom we love. Taxes are needed if we are to maintain the transportation system on which our whole way of life depends. And the education of our children is made possible by the taxes we pay. Law and order and public health would evaporate. The many things we have come to expect simply have to be paid for with money; they are not free.
There is another costly matter that we share and that is our Salvation. It is often said “Salvation is free.” That may be true for you and me, but it certainly wasn’t true for God it cost Him His Son. And it wasn’t free for Jesus either.
We are saved by God’s Grace. But we must never think that God’s Grace though freely extended is cheap. It was not only costly for God; it has a price for every person who hears Jesus say, “if anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me” (Matt. 16:24).
We are forever in debt to God for His Great Love!
Bob Refermat, Deacon Chairman