One night a few weeks ago, Jim watched from our house as the teens came along our road and pulled up to our mailbox and tried to bash it in with the ball bat.  After we inspected it the next morning, we found there wasn't even a dent.  I am hoping that it might have given the culprits a sore arm to have hit that concrete.  It did however, keep our mailbox from being damaged yet again, and having to replace it.
 

Damaging a mailbox is considered a federal crime. Since the mailbox is the property of the U.S. Postal system (even though I buy it ??), whenever someone damages one, they are breaking the law. Of course, it only works if the law is enforced. It isn’t. We even got the license number of a car a few years back whose occupant was hitting mailboxes on our road, reported it to the sheriff, and to my knowledge no one was ever prosecuted. I guess it just isn’t a serious enough crime to bother with.

Jim did catch a neighbor boy one year, who was out with a friend on our road, bashing mailboxes, and he followed their car as they went home…so he knew who it was. Rather than report it, because he didn’t want the kid to have a federal crime on his record, he made sure the kids parents knew about it, and then made the kid fix or replace all the mailboxes on the road that were damaged. Jim chose to show grace to the kid, but also enforce some consequences for behavior that deviated from the rules.

Through Jesus, God shows us grace even though He may still make us deal with consequences for our behavior if we don’t do the things we are supposed to. His desire is not for us to suffer or be eternally lost, but He wants to help us to make right choices every day. So when we do something wrong, like a parent, or a police officer, He will guide us to do the right thing, and cause us to experience the consequences that result from inappropriate actions.

Like the kid that Jim caught and chose to give a less severe punishment, rather than the punishment he deserved, aren't we lucky that we have Jesus to stand between us and God, to cover our sins, and prevent us from getting the punishment we truly deserve!  But, we have to choose to let Jesus protect us from bad actions, like the cement that now covers our mailbox and protects us from the ones who wish to do us harm.  We need to follow His word, and His leading in our lives, and make choices based on prayer and the wisdom that He gives us.