The Average Shoplifter

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9.)

The people of today are not perfect, but neither were they in the 1950s, in spite of how some might remember. William Manchester, in his masterful, historical work entitled THE GLORY AND THE DREAM, wrote of a 1957 study undertaken in a typical Illinois community. Shoplifting had increased dramatically in the 1950s, despite the dramatic economic upturn of the decade. To understand why, the police department researched their records to discover who the typical shoplifter was.

They expected to discover it would be a person of poverty, perhaps from a bad background. Instead, the standard shoplifter was a housewife, married to an upwardly mobile junior executive making $8000 a year (almost $60,000 in today’s dollars.) She was active in her church and PTA, a member of a bridge club. She had $50 (almost $400 in today’s money) to spend—per week.

How Reading the Bible Saved a Marriage

(I first heard this story on spring break campaign, when I was in college. The person relating it to us said that it came from the voice of HEARTBEAT—
Landon Saunders. For the sake of privacy, I am going to change the names of the spouses.)

Bob, a young man working with HEARTBEAT ministries was a workaholic. Things went sour in his marriage and it disintegrated. The couple obtained a divorce.

Bob, broken-hearted, went to Landon and asked, "What do I do?"

Landon said, "You do nothing—except get up an hour earlier each day and read the Word."

Because the divorced couple had a child, they occasionally had contact with each other. In time, the ex-wife asked Landon, "What has happened to Bob? He has changed so much."

Six months later, the couple remarried. Later, Bob wrote a tract for HEARTBEAT ministries calling it, "An Open Letter to a Troubled Marriage."

Clearly, many variables are present in marriage. However, never underestimate the power of the Word of God on an open heart.