Good morning and welcome. It's a good day to be thinking about God's provisions to us as we continue our journey here on the planet on this
Thursday, April 26, 2018. Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time. One time I was driving at night to Louisiana. It was in the early 1970's. I think I was going to fetch my wife and kids. At any rate, it was late at night. No satellite radio back in those days but I would always fiddle around with the knob to try and find something interesting to listen to. I picked up a radio station with a strange lady who went by the name of Madam something. She was taking calls from folks who had issues and problems that she promised to somehow fix. She was a medium of some type who mixed religion and spiritism to deal with people's problems. This lady caller came on the line. She was from Houston. She was wanting help with her boss. He was unreasonable and she was in fear of losing her job. Something about her caught my interest. She used her first and middle name. She was asking this lady to do something to make things better between her and her boss. I suddenly recognized the caller. She worked for me. I was the boss. She had many performance related issues and I had counseled her several times about her situation. She told the medium she really needed to keep her job. Her being close to losing her job was a very correct reading of the situation. I don't think the medium helped but I didn't end up firing that lady. However, she either retired or was let go in the first round of some layoffs the company did. There I was, driving at night, having never listened to that station and that person before and suddenly I'm the subject of the story. I was a very young supervisor at the time and I may have been overly zealous in my efforts to fix everything and everyone. Pretty strange, don't you think? I must have been perceived as being pretty tough if someone felt compelled to resort to that type of help. That's my weird recollection of the day.
I'm trying to remember if I have had any other of those types of experiences. Not to my credit, I do remember one Sunday morning standing out in front of the Church property in the little town where I grew up. I was a young teen and the men always stood out there talking and getting the last drag off their cigarette or pipe before the services started. On that day they were discussing those delinquent kids who needed to be caught and taught a lesson. These kids were stealing gas out of their vehicles and watermelons out of their fields. Okay. I may have tagged along as a part of such a venture a time or two. That didn't keep me from nodding in agreement as they lambasted these evil boys and their parents who obviously weren't doing their jobs. I didn't say I was proud of it. At that time, we never really saw it as a crime. If one of the older guys had a car, it had to have gas. A gallon or two was all that we needed to ride around into the wee hours of the morning. As far as the watermelons go, they had an entire field of them. That's how us boys justified doing stuff like that. And, let's face it, it was exciting. Wrong. Sinful. But, it was exciting, especially the times we were nearly caught. It was obvious from the way our men were talking they excluded me from those criminals they wished they could catch. Fortunately, God is in the forgiving business, and on a Saturday evening at services out at my girlfriend's Church, (my wife for nearly 54 years), on January 19, 1964, I gave my heart to Jesus. Since that time, I've failed often, however, I've never again been a part of those who took someone else's gas or watermelons. I thought you might want to know that.
I know I've mentioned both of those stories before but after more than ten years I may be reaching the prophetic realization of those words spoken by Solomon, "....there is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9) Within the next few days, I will complete my 2,800th episode, therefore, surely a lot of them have ended up being repetitive. When I was a kid a popular saying went like this, "All good things must come to the end and this is the end, my friend." I'm not sure when I will sign off from this writing venture, but, we all know there's an end date out there, somewhere. I actually still enjoy doing them. I suppose that continues to be a big part of the 'why' I do them. Someone told me that doing them might help to keep my mental faculties sharp. I'm still waiting for that one to kick in. I could have used some improvement earlier this week. My wife is still having fun at my expense because the other morning I looked at the clock wrong, got up, got dressed, and even made my coffee. It was 1:30 a.m. When I discovered what I had done, I wasn't really upset about it. I simply took my boots off and went back to bed with my work clothes on, ready to get up and go closer to 3:30 a.m. The wife somehow noticed that I was wearing my work clothes in bed. I told her what had happened. I've heard about it a few times since then. That's okay. I do my best to bring smiles to as many as I can. And, I know we all would agree that these days we all can use as many smiles as we can get. Thanks for tuning in. Enjoy the rest of your day and don't forget to thank God for all that He has done, is doing, and will do, for us all.
Amen. ...More later.
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