No Stopping on the Zig-Zags

Outside St Stephen’s Primary School in Burnley is a rather uncompromising sign:

No stopping on the zig-zags

Not 1 minute, not 30 seconds,

NOT EVER!

No-one can accuse the leadership of this school, nor the County Council whose badge sits in the corner, of being less than clear. Those yellow zig-zags are designed to mark a distinctive space in front of schools and beside crossings to keep safe the little humans likely to come pouring out of their school gate. Anxious though parents might be to collect their child promptly, and to park their cars as close as possible, using that zig-zagged stretch of tarmac is forbidden.

Although a traffic warden well-stocked with tickets, or a constable with access to a constabulary tow-truck, would also have the desired effect, the sign communicates a no-compromise view of parking at the school gates. Would that we were just as rigid and inflexible with sin. Paul tells the Corinthians in 1:6:18a

Flee sexual immorality.

And John tells his readers in 1:5:21

Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

The Lord Jesus is severer still. In Matthew 18:8, he teaches

“If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life lame or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the everlasting fire.”

Even allowing for hyperbole, the message here is at least as direct as the aforementioned sign above: 

Stop sinning.