Practice Run

In my diary entry yesterday (posted about 4 a.m.) I said I’m planning to write a book about following God’s will and my working title is If God Leads Me, Why Do I Run In Circles?.

Then, I spent all day yesterday practicing for that book—not the God leading section, but the running in circles part.

I drove Ginny to work so I could keep the car. I made her late so she had to dash into the building but one of her co-workers sat outside in the smoking area with me and we talked about her dogs and about good places to go camping.

By then it was time for me to go to the Jacksonville Fire Museum. For the past 35 years I’ve accumulated a bunch of books, artifacts, and stuff related to Florida history focusing on Jacksonville, and I’m talking with the curator about selling my collection to the museum. We’ll see what happens.

Leaving the museum, I drove to an antique store only to find the item I’d seen there two weeks ago had already sold to somebody else.

Waterhaul!

(That’s a local curse word, an old shrimper’s term for when you cast your net but it brings in nothing but water).

Then I stopped to visit a cancer patient. There was no chair by his bed so I stood while he talked my ear off. Beginning with vicious racial remarks then moving on to rant about taxes, insurance companies, city government, and Social Security, he raddled on and on. My feet ached so bad, burning and stinging from standing so long. I had other business I needed to attend to—but the old guy talked in a panic as though I were the last audience in the world…

Then the thought occurred to me, I just may be his last audience in this world. It behooves me to stand here and listen.

Do you suppose God’s feet hurt while He’s hearing me ramble on and on about the same old things He’s heard me say a million times before? Remember, He does have nail scars.

Breaking away, I drove to the bank to pay our mortgage. And speaking of feet… A num was in the bank ahead of me. I mean the old fashioned kind of nun with white bib, a wimple (is that what you call the huge fancy head-gear with wings?) and long black skirts…

And peaking out from under the edge of her floor-sweeping skirt, I saw she was wearing electric, day-glow, blue flip-flops!

Immediately I thought of that Scripture, “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!”

I doubt that either Isaiah or Paul had blue flip-flops in mind when they penned those words, but that’s the Scripture I though of.

From the bank, I drove home to pick up some papers I’d forgotten before leaving this morning. Then to Dave’s Diner for a late breakfast, then to Wal—Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here—Mart Super Center. Where I walked miles to the aisle where they always keep the product I came for. And as I walked, I impulse bought a basketful of other stuff that struck my fancy. And I got the aisle to find the stuff I wanted had been moved—to make way for Christmas toys! (I mean it is still August, isn’t it?) So a helpful employee directed me back the way I’d come, but the stuff was not there either.. So another helpful employee ping-ponged me back thataway. And I finally found the aisle I wanted—only to find they no longer stock the stuff.

I said a bad word.

It wasn’t waterhaul.

I was a bad boy. I left my full shopping cart sitting right there in the middle of the aisle and I walked out of the store without buying anything. I’d spent over an hour, but not one penny, in that store.

Waterhaul!

Then I drove to a pool supply store where the young man thought I looked too old, decrepit and feeble to carry a bucket of chlorine tablets out to my own car.

He was right, but he didn’t have to let me know it!

Young whippersnapper!

Then I drove to a plant nursery to buy Ginny a flowering Crown-Of-Thorns cactus—but they tell me it’s not a cactus. It may not be a cactus, but I’ll bet it cost a whole lot more than the original Crown of Thorns it was named after.

Then I drove home to unload things.

Checking my e-mail, I found a note from a lady named Betty about a story I wrote back in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Betty said, “I remember this story, almost word for word, from maybe 20-25 years ago … It had a huge impact on how I lived my life and I've recalled it as a favorite modern-day parable many times in different conversations…over the years”.

I feel that so much of what I write disappears without a ripple. So Betty’s note certainly gave me a lift.

Oh, the story she found online and mentions is “The Boomerang Food Basket” at http://www.cowart.info/Monthly%20Features/Boomarang/Boomerang.htm .. I’ve included it as a chapter in my book Gravedigger’s Christmas (available at www.bluefishbooks.onfo ).

Anyhow, by then it was time to pick Ginny up from work, so I drove downtown. Then we drove to the Main Library. Then we drove to a restaurant for supper where Ginny ran into a friend of hers whose husband, Billy, suffered a bad fall and is undergoing surgery today.

Finally we drove back home—full circle to where the day started.

Thus I ran in circles all day.

Did God lead me?

Does He lead us in mundane run-around-chores?

Is He Lord of the Ordinary?

Does the Almighty God, Creator of the Universe, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Savior of the World, Risen Lord of Life—does He preside over times when the highpoint of the day is seeing a nun wearing blue flip-flops?

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet…”