August 16 – “Again”

It rained.  But not the rain that falls gently from the skies and soaks quickly into the thirsty ground.  Oh, no.  This was the kind of rain that comes with lots of wind and noise and cascading torrents, yet when you look out the window you realize that the sun is shining but wet stuff is still pouring from the sky.

And then I went to the dentist.  I had a filling that partially fell out (eating that infamous WalMart fried chicken.  When will I ever learn?), and the dentist fixed it.  Now, I confess.  I was looking forward to milking that dentist trip all afternoon and well into the evening. And I did have a bit of a headache from holding my mouth open all that time.  I mean after all, going to the dentist is painful, right?  Well, unless it's Blair Jones in Mansfield, Texas, that is.  He is the master of no pain dentistry.  But in spite of my predisposition to expect plenty of pain, my new dentist here did a pretty good job, too.  But, hey, no one had to know that.  I could still go with the headache thing right?  At least that.  So I returned home, all set.

But did I mention that it rained?  Well, it rained.  And Chris came into my office before the numbness in my mouth even wore off and told me that we had a problem.  A problem with … the tree.  Same tree.  Same problem.  I went with her into the back yard, and sure enough, another huge limb had crashed into our fence.  Fortunately, we still had Nathan’s chain saw on a stick (Well, that’s a relative term.  I’m still not sure how that made me fortunate.  It’s presence meant that I had to actually use it).  So once again we began the arduous task of lopping off limbs and chopping them up into smaller pieces and hauling them to the street. 

This time we made another discovery.  As we cleared more and more of the branches, we realized that the telephone connection wire had popped loose from the house and was hanging down in the tree.  That would also be our internet connection, so I climbed back on the ladder and cut down some more.  And then I was able to see that the cable TV cable was also strung through the branches, just waiting for the proper gust of wind to rip it from the house as well.  And just above that was the entire electricity cable.  Needless to say, that tree got quite the scalping this time around.  And once again, I’m sure there is a life lesson hidden in this story somewhere, but I have to go to water exercise class right now.  Feel free to respond with poignant theological implications.

1 Corinthians 9:19 says, “Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.”

Father, thank you for the rain.  Our grass is loving it.  Amen.