I had been watching part of a TV play and it was having an effect on me that I didn’t like. The actors exhibited a way of life which seemed devoid of all moral self-restriction and all conscience. Money and morals were no problem and total freedom of every sort, including sexual freedom, was taken for granted. I know it was fiction but it represented a way of life which is far from fictional.

So here I was, going to a meeting in the city, with this vague feeling in my mind that in some way I and millions like me, were being subtly told to forget all our old fashioned notions and taboos about sin and guilt, cut loose and really start living.

The meeting I attended began with a very smart chairman calling the meeting to order and then would you believe, reading some very old words:

‘Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, who does not sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. He will be like a tree planted by streams of water, but the wicked are not so.’

And suddenly everything began to click into shape, the uneasy feeling I’d had about the play went, and I began to see it in proportion. Honest and good men are not missing out on life. Those who flout God’s law and scoff at God’s word do not find joy, peace arid satisfaction. Truly mature freedom is within God’s declared way of living.

Now read: Jeremiah 17: 5-10.