Some Days I Just Want To Go Back To Egypt

Today is the second anniversary of me getting laid off from the private school that I had been working at for six years, after I had been offered the position of the first full time school counselor in the schools history including a substantial pay increase. The spring before, there had been a huge upheaval and the principal/superintendent was let go. The gentleman who the school board brought in had big plans. Within the private school world that is a big deal because very few private schools have full time school counselors. I spent the summer preparing for my new assignment including researching additional classes. Then two days before school was to start, I got THE call. The voice on the other end was that of the principal. “This is one of the hardest things I have had to do”, he began. “The board wants me to cut another million dollars of the budget, so I am going to have to let you go”. He then begged off because he had a meeting. Wow, I thought to myself, let me go and save a million dollars. This must be how a pro athlete feels when they are let go. Yes, it was the only time in my life when I ever felt like a pro athlete. In the last two years I have had some highs and lows. But as one lady at church put it weeks ago, “people have hurt me or let me down, but God has never failed me”.
Yet in the last couple of weeks as the pressure has mounted. Continued therapy from my car accident: not being able to work because of the pain and therapy; bills needing to be paid; sniping with my wife has led me to longingly think back to my teaching days. Saying, “Oh Lord, why did all that have to happen to me”? Then I try to force myself to remember how hard was to get days off because the school had no money for substitutes, that was especially troublesome when my father was dying of cancer. Or dealing with the parents who believed they paid your salary and treated me like a hired hand and not an educated person.
A few nights ago in my devotional I was reading about as the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness they became frustrated with God. They were tired, hungry and angry with God, to the point where they were saying that “He just led us out here to die”. “We were better off being slaves in Egypt. At least there, we had our bellies full”. You read that and you wonder how God’s people could just give up on Him. Where was their faith”? Then you turn off your lights, lay in the darkness and begin to pray. As you whine about this and that, thinking about your past life. That life may not have been the best, but at least you had a twice monthly pay check. You could always depend on the money. But now God, I have to make choices about money and how to spend it. Sometimes just spending time in prayer hoping that a trip to the mail box will contain a check. Knowing that little old ladies feel sorry for me and buy me a ticket to Mariner game and blah, blah.
Then it hits you, YOU ARE AN ISRAELITE!

Roll Tide - Roll Jesus Right Out

Once upon a time in the section of the US of A known as the South, there were two great powers. One power controlled the hearts and minds of the people on Saturday afternoon. It did not matter what the people were doing come kick off time most things in the south came to a halt. Some gathered around their radios. Others turned on their televisions. Those lucky few who had tickets came to the great stadiums of the SEC. Dressed in school colors of Tennessee, Ole Miss and Alabama. They cheered, they booed, they cussed out the referee (but never around the women folk). When darkness fell upon the land, all returned to normal. For the people had to get ready for the other great power. For the next day was Sunday and the people would once again allow life to come to a stand still as they gathered to worship their Lord Jesus Christ. For decades these two powers lived in respectful co-existence. Saturday belonged to SEC football and Sunday was the Lord's day. Unfortunately those days like my hair line seem to becoming a memory. This morning I read how yesterday( Sunday) the University of Alabama had their football media day. I was in shock, "The Tide" dared to have their media day on the Lord's day! Where were the protests of the Godly? You know what this means? If a major college can have their football media day on a Sunday in the "Bible Belt" with ne'er a protest or concern, we Christians in the rest of the county have no chance! Sunday is now lost!

Wagon Train and God

My wife and I have a penchant for watching old TV shows. Shows where people keep their clothes on and do not swear like a junior higher attending a public school. Last night we were watching Wagon Train. You know the real old ones with Ward Bond and Robert Horton. It was getting late and my wife really did not want to go back to work. She is self employed. So instead we finished off the disc so we could send it back to Netflix. This morning she got up to finish the client, she was going to work on last night. To her surprise, the IRS decided this morning to do something to her client's bank account. I will not go into the details because the IRS does not like to have their mistakes talked about publicly and I do not need an audit. But here is the God thing, if we had not decided to watch that last episode of Wagon Train to finish off the disc: she would have finished off that client last night and today they would be in a world of hurt. But because we decided to watch Wagon Train forcing her to work on that client's stuff this morning, she caught and saved the client thousands of dollars. Who says God does not use TV for His glory - "Wagons Ho"!