Cheating the Cheater

“…For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people,

but the Lord will arise over you.”  Isaiah 60: 2

How would you like to experience the thrill of trumping a consummate cheater during a long and difficult ordeal in which you appear to be losing?  DJ re-discovered how to do just this during a recent vacation get-away.

The sunset was absolutely gorgeous, and a gentle wind blew across the landscape rippled with breathtaking mountain tops high in the Sierras Maderas of central Mexico.  DJ was dining alone, as he often does on solo vacations.  Half way through diner, Suzanna and Ginny, also guests at the mountain resort, joined him at the other end of a long, cafeteria-like table, and quickly engaged him in polite conversation.  Suzanna was from a nearby town, and Ginny was from New York.  The two had met each other a couple of years earlier during a trek through an artist town in Mexico.  Sharing a common interest in ceramic art, they had become not only good friends, but also travel buddies, despite apparent differences in their ages, family status, and employment.  Ginny, a widower, was the elder artist, and was an experienced international traveler.  Suzanna was a family lady, business person, but not in art as was Ginny, and had limited travels across Mexico and in the US. 

The bond that DJ witnessed between these ladies during the rest of the evening was absolutely remarkable, with non-stop conversation on incredibly diverse topics of local, national and international interests – both serious and joking.  Late in the evening, Suzanna shared a hilarious story about how she helped her husband smuggle auto parts from the US across the Mexican border for use in his business.  Arriving just after the border posts closed, she managed to convince the officers on both sides to re-open the gate to allow her passage.  Since they were in a rush to go home, the border patrol agents quickly waived her and her two young children through, without any formal check of her vehicle.  Making her way to the nearby highway towards home, she hit a roller coaster dip in the unpaved road.  While the kids seemed to enjoy the quick dip in the road, the car apparently did not!  The motor died a few minutes later, and they found themselves stranded on this remote road several hours from home.  Thankfully, Suzanna was in range of a cell phone tower, so she was able to call her husband.   He calmed her down and assured her that he would contact the dealer to ask what could have triggered such a problem in their late model, well maintained car. 

Shortly after the call, Suzanna noticed in her rear view mirror the dust from a rapidly approaching car.  The driver pulled up behind her and jumped out of his car.  She recognized the border patrol uniform and was both relieved and tensed.  She wondered whether the officer was there to help her or to conduct a vehicle inspection which he was too rushed to do at the crossing a few miles back.  Her tension quickly evaporated when the officer recognized her as an ole family friend. 

The ringing of Suzanna’s phone interrupted their chat about family matters and the situation in which she now found herself.  As promised, her husband had quickly found out the problem with the car, which could be easily remedied by engaging a re-set button located under the jack in the trunk.  Suzanna panicked.  Her border patrol friend was now looking under the hood to see if he could determine the problem.  She thought he might want to use the jack to see if perhaps the undercarriage might have been damaged from that roller coaster dip. 

“No, no, I can’t do that, Honey!  Don’t ask me to do that, pleeeeeeeeease!!!,”  she quietly screamed into the phone, trying to keep her conversation private.  The hood slammed and the officer walked closer to Suzanna, waiting until she completed her phone call. 

“How awkward,” she thought, as she quickly ended her call with her totally confused husband who simply could not understand why his perfectly competent wife could not follow such a simple instruction from the car dealer.   Suzanna panicked again as she read into the officer’s eyes his likely question, ‘Please open the trunk so I can get the jack, raise the car and see if maybe that roller coaster bump may have damaged something under the car.’  She also read the expressions on her kids’ faces as they nervously twitched wondering what was going on, and whether mommy was in any trouble.    

Prior to beginning her trip home from Phoenix, Suzanna had carefully tucked dozens of auto parts in every conceivable crevice of her car, including under and around the jack, hoping that, as with many times before, the border patrol agents would recognize her and simply waive her through the customs area.  Well, they did the same this time, too, but now here she is between a rock (her husband’s instruction) and a hard spot (the off duty border patrol agent and family friend).   

“Was that your husband on the phone?  What did he say?,” the officer asked.  Sweat beads began to appear on Suzanna’s forehead in the late afternoon heat. 

“Uhhh, yes, it was…,” Suzanna sheepishly admitted.  She explained that a reset button under the jack needed to be engaged to correct the problem.  Her officer friend grinned broadly, and volunteered to do this service.  With no other choice, Suzanna popped the trunk and the officer proceeded to search for the reset button.  He froze in disbelief when he saw dozens of brand new auto parts around and under the jack, but he quickly broke out in a loud laugh, shaking his head as he remembered how quickly his colleague had waived her through the customs area without checking her car.  Suzanna nervously joined in the laugh until tears streamed down her cheeks. 

When she caught her breath, she quipped, “Well , you gotta do what you gotta do!”  They continued to laugh, and even the kids joined in on the fun.

Suzanna had beaten the system, and even though she was later caught, there would be no penalty from her off duty border patrol friend.  She had cheated and seemingly had won the day.

Joining in the fun of sharing “cheating and getting away with it” stories, DJ chimed in with another hilarious border cheating story from Jamaica.  He recounted that a cleaver Jamaican business woman traveled to Asia to arrange a large shipment of supplies for her business.  When she returned home, she notified the customs agent in advance that she was expecting a large, important shipment to satisfy orders from some very important government clients.  When the shipment arrived, the agent notified the woman to come to the port for the inspection, pay the customs duty, and claim her shipment. 

During the inspection, the woman’s eyes got bigger and bigger until she hysterically screamed out, “Hey, mon, looks like dem shippers over thar don thief’ed half ‘o mi shipment!”  All pandemonium broke out as the officers tried to figure out whether the other part of her shipment may have gotten misplaced among the hundreds of incoming shipments arriving that day.  After hours of searching in the humid Jamaican heat, even skipping their lunch break, they gave up, and in sympathy with the extremely distraught woman, waived her through the rest of the customs clearance process without any duty payment.              

The next week, the woman received a call from another customs agent at another port of entry, advising that her shipment from Asia had arrived and was ready to be claimed.  Again, as the customs agents completed their inspection, the woman, who had been pacing about in nervous aggravation, yelled, “Hey, mon, looks like dem shippers over thar don thief’ed half ‘o mi shipment!” 

All hell broke out as the customs agents briefed their supervisor on the situation, and launched a frantic search for the other half of the woman’s shipment from Asia.  Hour-after-hour passed in the hot rain, until the agents, exhausted, finally gave up on their search, and went to report the results of their search to a now incredibly angry and upset Jamaican business woman.  Jamaicans across the island and around the world know well the anguish of a tongue lashing from an angry, fast-talking Jamaican woman, so the agents had agreed with their supervisor to waive the woman through the rest of the customs clearance process, without payment of duty.

A few weeks later during a coffee break at a training seminar for customs agents across the island, one agent shared with some of his colleagues from another port of entry his incredible experience with this woman.  Suddenly, the refreshments area literally exploded with boisterous, uncontrollable laughter as another agent chimed in with his similar story, and the two groups of agents immediately realized they had been “royally had!”

Voila!  This shrewd, cheating business woman had won the day!  Or had she, DJ wondered to himself, as Suzanna and Ginny nearly broke a rib laughing at his story?

In bed that night, DJ was quickened in his spirit to look at these two cheating stories through the lens of the Holy Spirit.  Both cheaters had apparently achieved their purposes, but in doing so, they had unknowingly been trumped by the master cheater, Satan, just as DJ had been trumped a few years earlier when he thought he had gotten away with cheating.  In all three cases, the “spirit of cheating” had likely slithered into our hearts, lying dormant for years, and thus quietly taking up residence in our lives.  This could have been related to some insignificant, long-forgotten cheating story from years past.  We see the fruit of these seeds planted by this spirit when we cheat and believe we have gotten away with it.  Thus, we “beat the system” again and again, until the spirit of cheating finally shoves us over the edge, into an abyss of unbelievable depths of sorrow, woe and depravity.  Voila, we, the cheaters, have been trumped by the consummate, master cheater. 

As this game unfolds, a loving God is always standing by extending to us the key to turn the tables on Satan and end his game.  That key is a simple, but sincere confession of the sin of cheating, and a request for God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ.  Voila!  With such a quick and simple act, God is faithful to forgive and to open our eyes of enlightenment to see more clearly and easily through Satan’s dark games.  With such enlightenment, we won’t be so quick to laugh at cheating stories in which the cheater apparently got away with it.  Rather, we can rejoice in our personal ability to “see” with spiritual eyes, and maybe even help somebody else to understand “the rest of the story” about how to cheat the consummate cheater at his own game!