Well, it’s a holiday weekend on beautiful
Galveston Island. Practically speaking
that means something very different than waving flags, attending parades,
watching fireworks, eating barbeque, and appreciating America. Don’t get me wrong, it is certainly all
that. But for Galveston Island it also
means an increase in our population in the realm of twenty to thirty thousand
people. Yep. I’m serious.
That many people come to the beach to play, and they stay for the long
weekend. They bring their money and
support our hotels and vendors, so in that sense it is a very good thing. But they also bring their cars along. And that tends to make for some crowded
conditions. Most Islanders stay at home
on weekends like this. And if they have
to get out, they use the well-established back road routes. Others get out of town.
Yesterday it was our intention to drive to
Corpus Christi for the funeral of April’s grandfather. We got gas in the car and even were packed
and ready to leave. On a whim I decided
to check and see if I could find a hotel in the same group that was stayed in
on our vacation. To my horror virtually
every hotel in the area we were heading to was completely full. I checked e very website I could think of,
and they all said the same thing. No vacancies. Well, that’s not entirely true, I guess. There were some rooms at some swanky
places. The kind where rooms start at
$250 a night. So much for a trip to
Corpus Christi. Later on Chris was
checking out the news on her phone. And
what should pop up but a story about a major traffic tie-up right on the road
we would have taken. Cars had been
stopped for over an hour and a half with no relief in sight. Hmm.
Maybe it was a good thing we didn’t go to Corpus.
That plan changed, we decided to go by the post
office to get one of our bills paid on time.
Holiday mail always messes with my bill paying schedule. Just when you need the mailman to come pick up some bills, there is no mail service. As we headed toward our major hub, 61st
Street, on a whim, I decided to check the fire department ap on my phone. A major accident came up – rollover on 61st
and Broadway. Of course. That’s exactly where we were headed. But that coincidental check of the ap saved
us a lot of time and grief. We managed
to pull into a restaurant parking lot and get turned around. We did go to WalMart just for fun. Well, we needed a specialty light bulb for the
church, but that was just an excuse to people watch as far as I was
concerned. And WalMart was loaded with
tourists. Great place to watch people
any time, but especially fun when they are on vacation and have let their hair
down. We finally went back home and settled in for the duration, when what to our wondering eyes should appear, but ... the mailman. I raced out the front door and gave him our bills to mail. Why he was delivering on the holiday weekend, i have no idea. Well, wait. I think maybe I do.
So we didn’t do so well with the plans we
had made. And we were a little peeved
about it. That is until we saw what was
going on that we could have been involved in if our plans hadn’t been
altered. Hmm. Maybe God does know what he’s doing.
Jeremiah
29:11-14 says, “For I know the
plans I have for you," declares the Lord,
"plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a
future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen
to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Father, thank you for your protection. Feel free to invade our itinerary any time.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment