Immunity

There is a persistent characteristic of humankind which causes many of us to imagine that we are somehow immune to those things which affect all other men. One of the best evidences of this feeling of personal immunity is the need that someone found a long time ago for adding the words “This Means You” to signs which say “Keep Out” and “No Admittance” and other instructions intended to restrict the activities of all comers ⎯ in spite of which there are still those to whom it never occurred that it really means them. We find those who suppose themselves to be immune from obedience to law, and from the penalties that come from breaking law ⎯ those who imagine themselves to be immune from sorrow and trouble, and those who suppose they can live in a world which is grievously sick and somehow escape being affected by that sickness. The inward consciousness that a man may have of his own personal importance, may, if not rightly interpreted, lead him to suppose that he is untouchable in some respects ⎯ that the rules and regulations, the sacrifices and sorrow, the restraint and responsibility which qualify the lives of others should not apply to him. And until life really begins to handle us in earnest, many of us are not aware that “This Means You” means us at all. In spite of the buffetings of the years, in spite of the chastening hand of sorrow, regret, disappointment, and all the other processes of the refiner’s fire, there are some who yet cannot understand that all the laws of life and all the commandments of God pertain to all of us, as well as to others. And if, in that hereafter which lies before us all, some of us find certain restrictions imposed, certain “Keep Out” signs which cannot be ignored, then at last it may dawn upon our consciousness that the Lord God really meant us when he laid down the rules and said to each man and to all men, “This Means You,” which indeed it really does in spite of any false feeling of immunity we may have concerning ourselves in this world or any other.