January 23 – “Anniversary extravaganza”

I had an unusual experience while in San Antonio.  We were being given the grand tour of the facilities at First Baptist Church.  That is an amazing building.  It was built in the 1920's.  Instead of the usual, for the time, God-church architecture (That would be a building that makes you want to look up and toward the altar), this one was a domed building with a semi-circular arrangement.  Now there are some beautiful stained glass windows, but the feel is more horizontal that vertical.  It is a great combination of "look up to God" and "look around at the people Jesus died for."  The whole facility, including educational buildings (oh, and they have a full gym on the third floor of one of them), covers two or three city blocks.  And they keep it locked.  I understand keeping the outside doors locked.  It is in downtown San Antonio.  But I mean every door is locked, inside and out.  Doors to offices, doors to hallways, doors to elevators, doors to Sunday school rooms, doors to storage closets, doors to janitor closets.  Everything is locked and needs either a key or a code to open.  And the whole place is quite a maze as well.  If a crook did get in, and was able to unlock all those doors, he might never find his way out.  Christi made the comment that she felt sorry for the custodian who had the responsibility of locking all the doors every Sunday.  Hope he didn't have to do anything else, like actually clean the place.   They are having their 150th anniversary extravaganza this weekend.  Yesterday was a big picnic at a dude ranch near Seguin.  Today is their big worship service.  They are having as many former staffer in as can come.  I noticed that the one guy I know who is a former staffer will be there.  Lance was the youth pastor in Denver who went up there at the same time I did.  I told Josh to tell him I said hi.    Now for my unusual experience.  As we walked into one foyer area we had to go down three steps.  Not very big steps.  And just three of them.  I only made it down two.  Now two out of three is not all that bad as a batting average.  But to effective maneuver down stairs, it's pretty well set in stone that you need to cover 100%.  Somehow I missed the final step.  I don't know if my heel just caught it or if my special relations capacity was suddenly diminished.  But I missed the last step.  And as a result I fell.  It didn't hurt or anything.  And I don't recall any joint difficulty as a contributing factor.  But I fell.  Hopefully I got it out of my system.   On the way home I decided to try out the new device I bought.  It is a converter to change the car's cigarette lighter into a regular outlet.  I'm typing this while hooked up to it right now, so I guess it's working.  Maybe next time I'll watch a movie or something.  Now I have to find out if our air card is still working.  Haven't used it in awhile, and there is certainly no wireless signal in the middle of nowhere out here.   Psalms 37:23-24 says, "If the Lord delights in a man's way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand."   Father, thank you for allowing us to get back up when we fall.  Amen.