Thursday’s Thirst

 If you enjoy a good basketball game, I hope you were watching your TV earlier this week.  Or better yet, perhaps you were at Little Caeser’s Arena on Monday or Tuesday night.  Different teams … different levels … but very similar overtime wins for the home team in each instance.

Jesus was sound asleep in the boat … so filled with confidence in his Heavenly Father’s protection that the storm did not even wake him.  He certainly possessed that peace that surpasses all human understanding.  And, when wakened by his distraught disciples, he immediately shared that peace with them in the most loving manner possible.

It seems like the weeks that I have things to write about I find it difficult to find the time to write.  And the weeks that I have time to write, nothing worthwhile comes to my mind.  This is one of those weeks.  However, since I missed sending out Monday’s Memory this week, I decided to do a little rewrite of the 2013 encouragement that was supposed to be sent earlier this week.

With all of the dangerous hero worship – and hero denigration – going on these days, I thought it might be worthwhile to use a Thursday’s Thirst to meditate upon the One Christians are called to follow and emulate.  His name is Jesus.  Neither a politician nor a denominational spokesperson, “Christ be my leader by night and by day; safe through the darkness, for He is the way.  Gladly I follow, my future His care, darkness is daylight when Jesus is there.” (LSB 861)

When I was growing up, my parents wanted me to be an engineer or an accountant.  I wanted to be a teacher.  They even had me meet with the superintendent of our school district for him to discourage me, however his line that I remember is, “Yes, there are more teachers today (this was the early 1970’s) than jobs for them, but there will always be jobs for good teachers.”  I went to college to become a teacher.  Somewhere there is failure in that story.  When I graduated from college, the church could not find a teaching position for me … so I worked in a church that had no school.  Failure.

The time was 8:15 a.m. and my cell screen said the call was from our granddaughters’ school.  As I answered the call, the voice on the other end said, “Pastor, we just wanted to be sure that you are all right.”  “Yes,” I said, “and I will be there for 9:15 chapel.”  “Chapel,” they said, “is at 8:15.”  That’s when it hit me – SMACK Between the Eyes – that I had placed the wrong time in my calendar, and thus let down the entire school!  Ouch.

Wow – did this week ever get away from me!  First I never got around to sending out Monday’s Memory and then I forgot all about today’s epistle until Monica reminded me.  While I can say that life had some surprises that made a busy week even busier, that sounds too much like an excuse.  So I will simply say that other activities were of higher priority for me over the past seven days.  So, instead of laboring you with my own words, I invite you to spend some time today with Jesus and his words.

I have spent the past two nights in a “Boutique Hoel” in Ann Arbor.  I had to look up the word to see what I should expect.  AI tells me “it is a French word for a small, fashionable shop selling high-end or specialized goods, often with an air of exclusivity” that has expanded in various industries (like “boutique hotels”).

I am not sure if “oblivious” is exactly the right word, but it is close.  On this, the 24th anniversary of 9/11, I am thinking about the many first responders – many of whom lost their lives – who on that day were simply doing what they were trained and called to do … oblivious to the risk because they were so focused upon the task set before them.  However, now – for us, they provide a wonderful example of sacrificial servanthood.  We can probably put the many generations of military veterans into that same category.