Our country’s National Debt now exceeds $14 trillion, and according to news reports, Congress will soon have to vote on raising the debt ceiling.

Like me, maybe it’s difficult for you to crunch numbers and grasp just how much debt we owe.  So I decided to research various news sources.  Here’s what I found.

First, by comparison, in 1980 the federal debt was $1 trillion. By 1990, it rose to $3.2 trillion, in 2000 it was $5.6 trillion and by 2005 our debt had nearly reached $8 trillion.  Our government’s debt has increased by $3.5 trillion in the past two years.

Next, I looked for information to get a perspective on 14 trillion.  Focus on the Family’s Citizen Link Web site provided these word pictures.

If you wanted to travel 14 trillion miles in space at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), you would fly non-stop for two and a half years. For instance, the highest total on most calculators is the number 99,999,999.  Using that number, you would have to buy 140,000 calculators to add up 14 trillion.

To pay our country’s $14 trillion debt in one year, every human being would have to come up with $2,000, that’s every human being on the planet, states Focus on the Family’s Citizen link.  Suppose you paid $1 per second on our national debt. It would take 32,000 years to cover $14 trillion.

These numbers explain why economists and commentators describe our country’s debt as a national crisis and tell us we need to get our fiscal house in order.  And, it’s not just our government’s problem.  Consider this statistic from visualeconomics.com: The combined amount of personal debt held by Americans tops $2 trillion. Creditcards.com lists the average credit card debt per household with credit card debt at $14,750.

Every man, woman, boy and girl in America and on this planet is born owing a debt not one of us can ever pay. Every person comes into this world with a sinful nature because the first man and woman couldn’t obey one commandment, much less 10. The Bible tells us, “All have sinned” (Romans 3:23). Our sin-debt separates us from a holy God.

But God showed how much He loved us while we were still sinners when Christ died for us. It’s difficult to grasp a love so great that paid in full all the sins of mankind.  Each one of us must decide whether to receive Christ as our personal Savior and accept His forgiveness for our sins.

There’s a worship song of praise that describes what Christ did for us.  “You came from heaven to earth to show the way.  From the earth to the cross, my debt to pay, from the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky, Lord, I lift Your name on high.”

One hymn writer expressed it this way, “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe.”