Theft aborts child's prayer

I had a closing scheduled today for a sweet young family. As we sat in the office the Mother retold how her 8 year old son had asked the Lord, in his prayers the evening before to not allow anything to postpone their getting into their new house. Such was the level of excitement in the household.

About 15 minutes later, my phone rang and it was the other agent. He told me that he was in the home to be purchased and that someone had stolen the brand new stove/range and dishwasher. That put a sudden halt to our closing and was in direct conflict with the prayer of this innocent little boy.

Last week I was showing property and the buyer I was with said, " My, that air conditioning unit certainly looks strange." Upon closer examination we could see that it had been disassembled and the copper tubing stolen. About a month ago I was called by a lady in the northeast about selling a piece of rental property she owned in Tallahassee. As I took the time to go and look at it for her I learned that her outside a/c compressor had been completely removed by some low life thief.

Every story has a comparable that escalates the previous one. My daughter and many others went to church over in Pensacola back in the summer. The air conditioner had been completely removed from the building the night before. These air conditioner thefts have to be done by someone who knows what they are doing elsewise you would hear of many more electrocutions in peoples back yards. Premeditated acts of opportunity they are.

I think back in my memory to reading an autobiography of a lady I knew named Gladys Wilson. She was a registered nurse and many years prior had worked for one of the big oil companies in Iran. She had pictures of human hands hanging at the gateway entrance to a town. These hands had been amputated and hung to provide a message to those who would contemplate stealing another's property. The occurrence of theft was very low, almost unchartable.

I have always felt that thieves are at the very bottom of the criminal food chain. They usually go uncaught. Do you realize that retail chains lose as much as 10% of thier merchandise at the hands of the very people to whom they grant a paycheck and provide benefits? Now that is low. A person who would steal from the person that puts groceries on his table is definitely a low life.

Of course this cost is added back into the cost of doing business and you and I end up paying for these criminal acts.

It is a sad reality that thieves have always been with us and very likely always will be. Just the same as cockroaches, slugs and fungus.