Lonely

Lonely. Can you imagine? I don’t have a day like this in ten years of days. Well, it hits me like this occasionally. The planets have to line up special, though. I am usually so busy I look for the moment when I can go pee. But occasionally, eveything stops and whapp, I ain’t got nothin to do. I tell you, I’m glad it don’t happen too often, I’d go stir crazy. Jason is scheduled to arrive tomorrow at 6:25 P.M. at the Denver airport. We’ll take off from there and drive to Orlando. It’s 1900 miles. Why, that’s nearly 3,000 kilometers. It would take two good days to drive that far and that without fiddlin, and all we have is one day and two nights. I think that is why I’ve got nothing to do. I’ve been getting ready little by little, and I’m worried about having enough strength between us to drive the distance nonstop. Jason’s body clock will be off quilter and I’m not as young as I was yesteryears. As a matter of fact, I drove to Oak Haven and back last weekend (1200 miles) and it took me all week to recover.

I know, we’d recover better if we flew. Actually, I tried to buy tickets with air-miles. I have two tickets, just what we need and I tried to cash them in, but United won’t do it when they can seat paying customers. I tried to go to Alaska to visit Julie and they wouldn’t accept my air-miles then, either. I bet if I decided to go to nowhere, i.e. where no one else wants to go, they’ll be glad to honor them, but who needs to go there? Well, anyway, I didn’t want to buy two tickets out of pocket. Jason lives on a shoestring, always, and I figure we can make the trip cheaper using my car. Except that I can’t use my car. Things happen. Bill was fixing my car when he got sick. Oh well. What aggravates the situation is that Jason made a mistake on the tickets he bought from Africa. He’s arriving at least one day later than he should be arriving. (Two days would have been better.)

So here I sit, anticipating tomorrow, and I ain’t got nothin to do. I’m ready. So I think, ok, I’ll prepare a sermon. I’ll get the jump on my next assignement. I really ought to do that, but nah, why should I prepare a sermon when I don’t have to.

I preached yesterday. Amazing. (It isn’t amazing that I preached yesterday. I preach every Sabbath and every Wednesday, and when the lifestyle guests are here, I preach every day.) What’s amazing is, the sermon I preached. I’m having a string of lousy sermons turn good, by grace. Really. I’ve been so busy, I am down to devoting two or three hours to a sermon, and by the time I’ve cranked it out, I could throw up. There isn’t anything more I can do but pray. But pray I do. Praise God for that. No matter how busy I am, I take time to pray. I’ve got no choice. It’s embarrassing to have a reputation as a good speaker, and then turn around and serve the people slop. Anyway, all I can say is, I prayed and begged the Lord for help and He turns around and fed the five thousand (50) a good meal. For yesterday’s sermon, I worked all of one and one half hours. That’s all I could do. I was sick over it, but when I got up to preach, God’s Spirit, to sooth my sickened heart, turned the water into wine.

One man walked out weeping. He told me that message was just for him. Half a dozen people told me the same. Strangers were asking for the recording of it and I stood there with my mouth open. God always treats me as if I am special. It blows me away.

There is a danger here, of course. Perhaps you’ve figured it out already. I mustn’t go around thinking I can wing it and the Lord will rescue me every time. It isn’t that hard for the Lord to turn the water into mud if His man gets a little too cocky.

Anyway, where was I. Oh yes, lonely. I was reading this morning in Counsels to Teachers that idelness is the devil’s workshop. I suppose it is, except the devil must be asleep, cause he hasn’t bothered to tempt me with anything exciting today. I did get the notion that I should go to town.

“To do what?” I asked myself. That was the end of the temptation.

So here I sit. On my bed, rambling. Wish you were here, maybe we could hoe corn together, or something.