It's just makes you want to cry.

No one wants to have to worry about protecting their safety and property every second of the day but with the economy in the ditch they tell us that crime is booming and that's what I have in my sights on this Wednesday morning, May 13, 2009. Yesterday I travelled into an area that I would not normally go. I was there to visit a particular specialty company. It's located in a part of the city that no doubt once was considered to be a thriving family oriented neighborhood. Nowadays there's burglar bars on top of burglar bars. I made the joke when I returned back here to the company that the muggers were standing in line waiting their turn having taken a number. I told the business operator that I thought I might put the parts up in the cab of the pickup with me and he said that would be a good idea because they wouldn't last long at all exposed in the bed of the truck, especially in that neighborhood. It was supposed to be a joke but he wasn't joking. Those people who have stayed in that area live quite differently than they once did and I could feel the tension in the air. Sad that this would be something faced every single day.

However, we are not immune, no matter where we live or how careful we are. Last week I received a call from an FBI agent who said a person arrested had one of our personal checks in his possession. The check had been written to pay a bill and placed in our mailbox on our street just a few days before. I immediately called my bank and since it was after hours they made note of the problem but by the next morning the thieves had already hit our account. My wife had to go in and set up a new account and transfer our funds over and then we had to apply to recover those funds taken through the fraudulent transactions. I had to leave work to go and sign the paperwork, we had to change all our direct deposit information, and now have to get new checks and essentially reorganize our financial affairs. Fortunately, we monitor our bank account daily, therefore, we would have caught this early but it still doesn't make you feel very good to know a person was arrested in a murder investigation and when they opened his cell phone one of our checks fell out on the ground. They believe it was stolen out of our mailbox. Therefore, we have resolved to change the way we pay our bills. We will likely begin paying them online, although with identity theft on the rise, many precautions must be taken. After this incident I went by one of the branch post offices to mail some letters and at 4:30 a.m. the receiving box was overflowing out the scoop. I had to force my letter through the mail sticking out of the box. That's probably one of those pickups that was cancelled!

The bottom line is that we live in a world where evil abounds. We all need to be careful. We need to practice basic techniques to protect ourselves while at the same time not allowing our concern to dominate our lives. For those of us who are believers we can only trust our God to protect us from harm. A few years ago I was in an area where we once lived and noticed how folks had built all kinds of fencing and even had added gates on their driveways to try and deter intruders. When we lived in that area it was an up and coming neighborhood with families and kids playing in the streets. Now it's like driving through something surreal. I noticed an elderly couple out to get their newspaper and they appeared to be very frightened by having to be out of doors. I don't know about you but that makes my blood boil and I thought to myself it was sin in all its forms that put my Savior on that cross. Without Him we would be as the song says: Like a ship without a sail. As my grandfather used to say, it's times like these when we need to pray and trust in God but also use a whole bunch of good old common horse sense. It still makes my blood boil to think about folks being prisoners in their own homes! May God help us is all I can think of as I end today's blog. Amen. .....More later.