May 28 – “Late night, early morning”

Wow.  Sure didn’t need an alarm clock to wake up today.  Around 5:30 a.m. we were greeted with a major thunderstorm.  A major, noisy thunderstorm.  Complete with flashes of lightning and claps of thunder so close that we were glad we had turned off the computer the night before.  At least the winds didn’t seem to be as high as they were with yesterday’s version.  I did my best to just stay in bed and enjoy listening to the rain on the roof, but that was pretty close to my regular time to get up anyway, so I got bored quickly.  Early mornings are my favorite times anyway.  I get a lot done between the hours of six and ten a.m.  Not so much for Chris, though.  Those particular hours are her favorite time to sleep, so she just snuggled down deeper under the covers and buried her head under part of a pillow.  I’ll see her sometime shortly after seven.

I got a call last night around 10:30.  That usually means some kind of crisis that I need to respond to.  My initial reaction is always to pray for whoever might be on the other end of the line as I gather my head and shake out the bedtime cobwebs.  This time I happened to notice the caller ID, though.  It was an 800 number.  Now that usually means a sales call of some kind, never something from a human being.  I pondered what politician would be calling so late at night when the polls for the voting runoff elections closed several hours before.  Actually I pondered a bit too long and the call dropped.  Before I could settle back into my crossword puzzle, though, the house phone began to ring.  Sure enough, it was the same number.  This time I went ahead and answered right away.  Now I was curious.  The caller was from the company that monitors the fire alarm system at the church.  Now they had my attention.  They had called earlier in the week and left a message that they weren’t receiving some kind of coded message from our system.  And that was the same thing this person reported.  After she told me that it seemed that she was ready to hang up, her job done, but I stopped her to ask, basically, “So what?”  What did that mean, anyway?  She went through some kind of canned speech explaining their procedures, but that’s not what I was asking.  Had to let her finish, though.  Finally she paused to take a breath long enough that I could ask, “So does that mean a battery is dead?  Is there a fire burning right now?  What is it that I’m supposed to do with this information?”  She hesitated a long time before answering.  Guess I threw her off track in her speech.  She finally managed to say she would connect me with the service department so they could set up a time to come check out the system.  That was a bit much for now-11:00 at night.  I asked if this wasn’t something we could do in the daytime.  She seemed genuinely surprised that I wouldn’t want to follow through right at that moment, but she finally gave me the phone number.  Guess I’ll add a fire alarm check to my day.

Jeremiah 6:10 says, “To whom can I speak and give warning?  Who will listen to me?  Their ears are closed so they cannot hear.  The word of the Lord is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it.”

Father, I know this verse has nothing to do with our fire alarm system, but together they did remind me that you have gone to great pains to warn us of the spiritual dangers around us.  Help us to pay attention.  Amen.