Outlaws, pardons, and a New Year …

Did you hear the news story heralded throughout the media today? The famous Wild West outlaw Billy the Kid will not receive a pardon from outgoing New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.

More than 100 years ago the then Governor had promised the outlaw a pardon. However, Richardson says Billy killed two deputies after that promise, and it was those additional crimes which was key in his decision not to offer the pardon posthumously.

To Billy the Kid, it really doesn’t matter the pardon isn’t being offered. He’s dead, it won’t do him any good now.

The offer of forgiveness has an expiration date. It is valid for the living. There comes a time when the clock runs out and the only thing we’re left with are the fullness of our circumstances without any pardon. In other words, justice is all that’s left to face.

As with the Governor, God doesn’t grant posthumous pardons. To come to an end of this life without truly receiving God’s forgiveness is to enter into an eternity facing the justice and judgment of a righteous Creator.

What a miserable life it is to live hoping to eek out a pardon in the “nick of time.” That is not “extraordinary living.”

As we usher in a New Year, I’d like to suggest that a great way to receive a New Year from God — a real way to live extraordinarily in the coming year — is to live within the forgiveness of God now. Of course, that would mean we would have to give up our lawless ways for submission and obedience to God. Forgiveness cannot be offered when the outlaw is still on the run.

On this, the last day of 2010, what better time to surrender. To bring to and end our disobedience and embrace the pardon offered through Jesus Christ. Doing so will bring an extraordinary new year tomorrow.

Scotty