We made kind of an unusual side trip on the way home from San Antonio. Now, I love short cuts. My Dad indoctrinated us as kids into the fine art of explaining most anything involved with a car or a trip or even a short ride to the grocery store. "It's a short cut." As I came to realize much later in life, he was simply training me in the fine art of being a guy. See, we don't ask directions; we take short cuts. We are never lost; it's just a short cut. We are never late; we were just so engrossed with the scenery on our short cut that we lost track of time. Short cut. Explains everything.
Well, this time Chris was driving. We decided to take a short cut back home, so we took off on one of the back roads, headed in this general direction. Actually this wasn't really a classic short cut yet. Here's that part of the story. A high school friend of Chris' messaged her a while back on FaceBook. They picked up the old friendship, mostly through Words with Friends and the occasional message. While they were communicating, the friend found out that she has breast cancer. So Chris decided to make her a prayer quilt using the official breast cancer material. This part of the short cut began as an attempt to connect with that friend in person.
I typed the address into my maps ap and off we went. Further and further away from San Antonio. The little blue dot kept moving in the right direction, though. Finally we arrived at the spot designated. It was an old deserted ice house. Really an ice house. Not ice cream. Not icees. An old abandoned house for selling ice. Definitely not what we were looking for. I reentered the address and the blue dot reappeared with a new site, even further down the road. This time we started watching addresses on buildings top keep our bearings the old fashioned way. That ice house just inspired us, I guess. It took a long time, but we finally found the address. It was a business establishment called Sir Vesa. A bar. No, wait. That's the right place. Chris's friend owns a biker bar and this was the address she gave us. Problem was, the biker bar was not open on Sundays. At least not at the time we were there. So Chris FaceBook messaged her (she didn't have a phone number). We waited ten or fifteen minutes, but got no answer, so we continued on our journey, missing perhaps my best chance to spend some time in a biker bar and actually feel safe. About fifteen minutes down the road Chris heard the telltale beep on her phone. Sure enough, her friend missed us by about 30 minutes.
We didn't go back or anything. Chris said she would just mail the quilt. Unless of course we can come up with another reason to visit San Antonio soon. Our short cut continued on through the back roads filled with bluebonnets and those yellow wildflowers. Field and fields of them. Well worth the inevitable time extension afforded by short cuts.
1 Peter 1:3-5 says, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade — kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time."
Father, thanks for short cuts and all the surprises they offer. Amen.
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