Lost Pager

1n 1998, I was helping a friend with construction near Cleveland, Tennessee.  They were out in the country, and I was laying the block for their house.  The second afternoon, the neighbor’s black lab sauntered over, and we became friends.  That is until I caught him carrying off my pager in his slobbery mouth.  When I shouted, he dropped the pager and ran off a distance to watch me.  I carried my pager on by belt, but the blocks got in the way, so I had laid it on top of the new wall in case my wife called.  These were the days before cell phones were readily available and cheap enough for me to afford.  I could afford $10 a month for the pager.  I left for lunch the next afternoon and went to a nearby convenience store for crackers and Vienna sausages but realized that I had left my pager at the jobsite.  I hurried back but couldn’t find the pager anywhere.  The dog wasn’t around either, which made him a suspect.  I drove back to the store and called my wife from the pay phone.  I told her to call my pager number in five minutes, stay on the line, and let it keep ringing.  I drove back to the jobsite and listened for the telltale buzzing.  I listened in each concrete block cell, but nothing.  I walked in ever widening circles around the house.  Then I heard the pager off in the distance.  Fifty feet away, in the tall grass (going towards the dog’s house), I found my pager.  I had to go back to the pay phone to call my wife to tell her the happy ending to the story.  But I had wasted an hour of my time and two quarters at the payphone.  But I had my precious pager in my hand.  I felt like the woman in the parable who had lost one of her ten silver coins.  Jesus said in Luke 15:9, “And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost.”  I didn’t call all of my neighbors, but I did call my wife.  And I did keep a better watch out for the black lab.

 

Emmorton Road

When I was growing up in Harford County, Maryland, there was an Emmorton Road (MD-24) and an Old Emmorton Road.  The new road was straighter and wider.  Old Emmorton Road meandered back and forth across the new road.  Occasionally, new Emmorton overlaid Old Emmerton for some distance.  As the county grew in population, Emmorton Road became too crowded to be passable.  After I went off to college in 1967, they built a new four-lane Road to parallel Emmorton Road.  They named the new one MD-24 and Emmorton Road became MD-924.  So, there’s an Emmorton Road, an Old Emmorton Road, and a new four-lane.  I’m so glad that God doesn’t need to make a new, wider road to heaven every few years.  For two thousand years, God has only had one way to heaven.  Jesus said in John 14:6, “… I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”  Jesus is the only way, and the road never needs to be widened.  Hey, it’s wide enough for you too!

Log Book

I learned to drive when I was fourteen.  My dad insisted that I keep up the mileage log, which he kept in the glove box.  I had to write down the date, gallons that I put in, subtract the last fill-up mileage from the current mileage to get the miles driven, and then divide the gallons into the miles driven to get the miles per gallon.  Complicated.  When I got my first car and drove off to college, I kept up the log faithfully … for two months until I realized that my dad wasn’t there, and I didn’t have to keep up the log.  The first fill-up that I didn’t write down, I felt guilty.  But soon, I felt freedom.  Wahoo!  No more calculations!  I now realize that my dad was just obsessive/compulsive.  He liked to write everything down.  And, although I have a tendency to be obsessive/compulsive, I try to fight the urge.  I intentionally unstraighten things.  But it’s hard.  I still have to make my bed each morning (not a bad thing).  Keeping rules is not a bad thing, unless you try to keep rules in order to get into heaven.  And that just won’t work.  You see, we get to heaven only by the merit of Jesus Christ.  Paul said in Titus 3:5, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his (Jesus) mercy he (Jesus) saved us …”  We don’t get to heaven by doing good things; we get to heaven by what Jesus has already done.  Hey, it’s by grace alone, through faith alone, to God alone be the glory!