November 18 – “Patience …”

I am officiating at a wedding tomorrow night involving one of our fire fighters.  Yesterday I had a chance to meet with the bride and groom to go over the ceremony before the actual rehearsal tonight.  So we met at the wedding venue.  Not exactly what you may have expected, but apparently not the first time it has been used for such a purpose.  The wedding will be held in the bay of station one of the Santa Fe Fire Department.  The station is a brand new one, and it is really big.  Good thing, too.  They are expecting as many as 300 guests.  The plan is to have table set up for the reception, and the guests will go ahead and find a seat at their table to watch the wedding.  The ceremony will take place on the portable dance floor being brought in for the occasion.  As part of the window dressing, I’m wearing my fire department class A uniform (the groomsmen are all wearing tuxes).  It is shaping up to be quite the event.

I made a troubling discovery when we arrived home from Waco Wednesday evening.  As I was unloading my briefcase and reloading it with church stuff I pulled out my computer to get it set back up.  And there was no electrical cable to go with it.  That crucial lifeline to information was missing.  OK, I know I still had access to my phone, but I still do a few minor things like journaling - and working - on my laptop.  But without the power cord I had a few hours at best.  I knew tight where it was.  I had been hooked up to it when we were at Josh and Christi’s.  She needed to download some pictures we took onto her laptop, but it was dead.  So I just plugged it into our cable.  Never thought about it again until that  gut-dropping moment Wednesday evening.  I texted them and they agreed to get it here in the mail as soon as they could.  Should arrive later this afternoon.  In the meantime, I dusted off our old laptop, the one Chris uses on the relatively rare occasions when she needs one (she is incredibly proficient on her cell phone).  I turned on mine long enough to save a few key files (Journals, weddings, Sunday sermons) to Dropbox so I could have access to them, then shut it down as soon as I could.  That gave me some breathing room, but I had forgotten how incredibly slow this computer is.  Not that I’m not thankful to have it, though.  I just have to be patient.  And who doesn’t want more chances to exercise patience?  It has worked OK so far, though, so I think I can hold out until this afternoon.  Here’s to patience …

Ephesians 2:14 says, “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”

Father, thank you for those excruciating times when you teach patience.  They really do work.  Amen.