Monday, April 25, 2022
Feast of Saint Mark, Evangelist                  Â
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Blackbirds singing in the dead of night
Beloved, clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another. God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.
I might have trouble understanding what this means, because I know humility is often just false pride. And it results eventually in  passive-aggressive behavior and assertiveness, which is so much healthier, fades away. But C.S. Lewis helps me out on this, with one of his pithy sentences:
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less.” That’s right! I think driving 14 or so hours most of the way back to Austin yesterday gave me some practice.
It was a typical Sunday on the interstates for me, listening to my home town Lutheran church service and then the service from Grace. I got started by 5:45 am. At my first stop in Lebanon, MO I got confused at an intersection and ended up with two warnings and a traffic ticket from a state trooper who was confused too, at what I was doing. At least I could listen to Matt preaching while he was writing the ticket.  I didn’t deserve the ticket, but there have been plenty of times when I did and no one saw me. When I drive 2000+ miles a month, a ticket now and then is just “the cost of doing business,” as my News-Gazette boss used to say.
But of course it sticks in my mind. And I think I’ll put together a list of times when I have been stopped by police (since those other times stick out in my memory, too). High school, college, with family in the car, by myself …
Cast all your worries on him because he cares for you.
But really, no big deal. Much worse was driving at least 100 of my 825 miles today in torrential rainstorms, sometimes through standing water that blew up on my windshield for a second or two so I couldn’t see. Not much traffic there, in Oklahoma that was, and we were all driving 30 or 40 mph with our flashers on. By the time I got to Dallas, the rain had stopped.
Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, waiting for someone to devour.
In Dallas, as happens at least once on every trip, two cars zipped through traffic at 90 or 100 miles an hour, chasing each other. I slow down just a little more when they go by. I already had slowed down after passing a multi-car accident, where the clean-up was just getting started.
Before I even left Illinois, I was casually passing a car when the driver pulled in front of me. He didn’t see me, I’m sure; the blind spot is a real thing, on both sides of the car. I slowed down a little, then got away from him as quickly as I could.
What else? Isn’t that enough? At 8:15 pm I got out of my car at the Hillsboro Days Inn and remembered the sweet (?) sound of the grackles in the front drive. Black birds welcoming me to Texas.
Blessed the people who know the joyful shout; in the light of your countenance, O Lord, they walk. Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord.
The motel owner remembered me, and gave me a perfect room on the ground floor. We caught up with each other a bit before I left, before I wrote this devotion, before I got ice cream at Braum’s, before I took a shower and fell into bed.
(1 Peter 5, Psalm 89, 1 Corinthians 1, Mark 16)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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