(Johannesburg) Organizers of South Africa’s Soweto marathon have apologized for forgetting to deliver enough water to thousands of runners on Saturday, leaving them dependent on the charity of township residents… it turned out that officials had simply failed to empty one of three storerooms, leaving a third of the water locked away.

No-one was hospitalized, but a lot of people were treated for dehydration.

Marathon for Masochists
November 9, 2004. Reuters – Oddly Enough

Comment: Withholding the Gospel when people desperately need it is quite harmful. Legalism locks away the Water of Life under many rules and regulations.

NEW TOPIC!

The legalist and the antinomian are fraternal twins, or at least kissing cousins, because both of them are guided by their own desires rather than by God’s will. The journey from legalism to antinomianism and back again is like circling the earth from pole to pole. No matter what direction you set out from the North Pole, you are heading south. But travel far enough and you will have passed the other pole and be heading north again. So the legalist and the antinomian are traveling the same journey, fleeing God’s law, but circling endlessly and never able to escape it. The legalist tries to escape guilt by rewriting God’s law, the antinomian by erasing it. Both attempts are equally futile. The only escape from the curse of the law is through the gospel. But neither the legalist nor the antinomian can retain the gospel. The legalist has destroyed the gospel by using the law as a way of salvation. He makes the law part of the gospel. The antinomian nullifies the gospel by converting it into a law. He too makes the law part of the gospel. Neither retains the gospel as what it really is—the gracious declaration, not of what we are to do, but of what Christ has done.

Brug, John F. Scylla And Charybdis, p 9
Winter 2006. Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly - Foreword to Volume, No. 1

Just as oxen that bear the yoke with great effort get nothing out of it but their food and are slaughtered when they are no longer fit to bear the yoke, so those who seek righteousness in the Law are captive and are oppressed with a yoke of slavery, that is, with the Law; and when finally, after great effort and sorrow, they have worn themselves out with the works of the Law, all the reward they get is that they are miserable slaves forever.

Luther, Martin. St. L. vol27, p.7

Woe to the life of man, however much it may be worthy of praise, if it be judged with mercy removed.

Augustine, Confessions. Book IX.

(Greensburg, Ind.) A man who went to the sheriff’s department to bond out his brother-in-law also ended up in jail when police realized the money he handed them reeked of marijuana.

…Indiana State Trooper Chip Ayers was nearby and asked for the money, she said. He smelled it and then asked Richards for consent to search him and his car, Meyers said.

Ayers found a pipe and a small amount of marijuana and charged Richards with possession. If convicted, he could face six months to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Smelly Money Lands Indiana Man in Jail
April 7, 2005. Associated Press – Strange News

Comment: Offering our own soiled good works for salvation will not end up any better than it did for this man.