And you said, I shall be the mistress forever… – Isaiah 47:7, Amplified Bible (AMP)

According to The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch.com:

Amy Wilson, 46, could easily have been voted the least likely person to get into trouble. But the Noblesville, Ind. resident spent two years at the Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana after embezzling nearly $350,000 from her employer, a family-run manufacturing firm, for whom she worked as an office manager. She pleaded guilty in 2009. Since then, she says, she has found God, and on her website, ForgedRedemption.com, she posts images of herself before and after the crime, tagging them as “prideful,” “humbled” and “redeemed.”

In her interview with MarketWatch.com, Amy was asked the question, “Did you ever think you’d get caught?” Her response was telling:

I never thought I’d get caught. It took me all of five minutes to do it each time I did it. I was paying my personal credit card off with company checks and then pulling the money out of the bank as a cash advance. I just thought that I was smarter than anybody in the world.

Amy’s attitude prior to her conviction is nothing new. It is as old as humanity itself, and it is one that was shared by the Babylonians prior to their destruction. In Isaiah 47: 6-11, God addresses the Babylonians, letting them know that, even though He used them to punish wayward Israel, He would soon punish them for their arrogance, for their pride, and for their cruelty. In their haughtiness, the Babylonians thought their prosperity and their strength would never end. But end they did, swiftly and without mercy.

When we sin, we can get caught up in the “It’ll never happen to me!” attitude. “I’ll never get caught,” we think. “I’ll never be punished. The good times of sinful pleasure will never end, and they will never have any bad effects upon me.” All such thoughts are lies of the devil, and the longer we believe in them, the worse our ultimate punishment will be.

I’m so grateful that Amy Wilson found The Lord as a result of being caught and punished for her crime. But I’m sure, if she had to do it all over again, she would have preferred to follow The Lord before getting into trouble, not after. Before you take your first step into sin – or before you decide to continue in the sin you’ve already dived into – consider Amy’s end. Consider Babylon’s. You might take comfort now in the thought that you’ll never get caught, but that thought won’t be any comfort when you come face to face with the reality that your sin shall surely find you out.