We had a really good day at church
yesterday. Almost forty people of all
ages and church backgrounds. One couple
arrived early (of course, at Seaside
“early” is any time before about five minutes after we are scheduled to start),
so we had a chance to get to know them a bit.
They were in from Oklahoma. Seems
they visit a lot of churches in their many travels. They said Seaside reminded them a lot of some
of the cowboy churches they have been to.
They liked the relaxed atmosphere and the teaching style where it’s OK
to interact with the pastor.
Another older guy with a Catholic
background stopped me after worship just to chat for a few minutes. He has been several times before with his
step-daughter. He calls me Pastor K and
he is Grandpa J. I found out that he doesn’t
really attend church anywhere unless he finds out his step-daughter is going to
their Galveston house. Then he wants to
tag along so he can come to Seaside. This
time he wanted to tell me some stories about his Navy days “when we rooted out
ol’ Saddam.” He was manning a sonar
station that led ships from all the cooperating nations through a canal to get
to the end-of-the-war summit. Seems the
bad guys had moved the buoys and repainted them to confuse the enemy. He was able to compare water depths to buoy
sites and determine the ruse. It took
some fast explaining, and he even had to go over his commanding officer’s head,
because no one believed him. The
commodore finally gave him carte blanche to communicate with any incoming
vessel in the commodore’s name. Just in
the nick of time he managed to convince the captain of the American vessel to
check his depth finder to verify his warning.
Next sound he heard was “All reverse.”
His quick thinking and action managed to avert any ships being grounded
and blocking the channel. He said they
wanted to give him a medal, but that just “sounded like kind of a silly thing
to get a medal for.” I told him that in
my opinion, “That was well worth at least a medal.”
At dinner on the grounds I had the luxury
of spending some time sharing horror stories of back pain experiences with one
of our semi-regulars. His wife is an RN,
so she and Chris shared stories of living with someone who had horror stories
of back pain experiences. I’m not sure
who had it worse, but we did have a lot in common.
After dinner we went over and checked the church
mail box. Along with the usual stuff, I noticed
that we had received someone else’s mail.
And there was an electric bill in that pile. Now, Jamaica Beach is a small town, so I decided
to track her down. Easy enough. Just looked her up in the phone book. For those of the new generation, that is a
printed publication that has all the names and telephone numbers of people in a
certain geographic area. We made contact
with her and Chris and I put on our mailman hats and drove over. She was a very sweet 85 year-old lady who had
been out of town for several weeks and just returned to pay her bills. She was quite thankful and even invited us
inside for some coffee or tea. We passed
on that offer, but then she invited me to come over sometime and go fishing. Now that might happen. Her home is right on the Bay, so it would be
a prime spot for some really good fishing.
Wonder if she has fishing lights …
Hebrews 12:1 says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,
let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles,
and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”
Father, thank you for all the folks you
sent to be touched by your Spirit at Seaside yesterday. Amen.
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