March 8 – “Leaning Tower of Power”

We had to call Centerpoint the other day.  We have a candidate for the next great tourist attraction in Galveston in our backyard.  It’s called the Leaning Tower of Power.  Reaching into the sky with its huge Clod of Clout, it sends its wiry tentacles spreading in literally every direction.  But alas, it seems three of those appendages, the very ones making their way to our abode with much-needed waves of energy, were being stressed to the maximum limits of their capabilities.  The tension on one had already strained the limits to such an extent that the bolt securing it in place to our roof had been ripped from its resting place as easy as a pigmy headhunter’s poison-tipped spear that has been heated overnight in the clan campfire (after being sharpened to its finest possible edge, of course) can slice through a large tub of Blue Bonnet oleo on sale at WalMart for $3.99.  As a result the cables had been once again extended to their maximum capacity.  And once again we were facing that horrifying prospect of having three key portions of our very existence ripped away.  Cable television would be the first to go, for that was the one that had already blown a bolt.  Next would be the telephone line, which indeed still carried a landline connection, but which also was the source of the often accessed lifeline called internet.  Finally would fall that most basic of life supporting systems, the one thing that changed the course of life as we know it, the primary source as well of my concern at this crucial juncture in the history of the Leaning Tower of Power: Electricity.  (Add here sound track of maniacal laughter with thunder crashing in background). 

Oh, the report brought an immediate response.  Two Centerpoint employees arrived within the hour to inspect the embattled landmark.  A mere cursory glance, however, seemed to tell them that there was nothing they could do, save release some of the tension on the electrical appendage, which would but grant us a brief reprieve of concern.  The investigators did, however, promise to return to Power Central and humbly request that the Leaning Tower of Power be forever removed and replaced with a new bastion of energy with the capacity to stand tall and straight as it delivers the juices of life to those needy ones gathered hungrily around it.  When will that happen?  Alas, there can be no way of knowing, for there are many other hotbeds of hunger that have no operative towers of power at all.  So we must wait.  And wonder.  And cast our eyes often at the fabled Leaning Tower of Power, searching for the next signs that connectors are being wrenched from their supports.  And what may be the consequences for the future?  What further can we do to avoid the inevitable?  Sacrifices, perhaps?  No cable television for recreation.  No telephones for communication.  No internet for connection with the outside world.  No power for warmth or cooling or refrigeration or lights.  It will become as it once was in the dreaded Days After Ike.  Aaaaargh.

 Psalms 70:5 says, “Yet I am poor and needy; come quickly to me, O God.  You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay.”

Father, I know our situation is nowhere near that desperate.  You are after all the only thing we really need.  Amen.