Please-No! Don’t let it be for Me!!

We played….

I think as we get older, one day, we realize we are a little more brittle than we were when we were playing tackle football in the front yard when we were kids. Oh, did I mention no pads or helmets? Yeah, bad choices. But the parents just watched from the window because, well, isn’t that how you’re supposed to play? We played a form of rugby in grade school where whoever had the ball, got smeared. The rules escape me as I pen this, but I don’t think there were teams. Maybe there were teams, if for nothing else than to have someone to pass the ball to so you, yourself, didn’t get, well, smeared.

Later in life, we do other things, like drive fast, ski fast, water ski without skis. Yes, that’s a thing. How about wilderness camping in Alaska where you actually do run the risk of getting eaten by a bear?

When we’re young, we do all kinds of things. And the definition of ‘youth’ could be a pretty wide gap. It depends on the background, sex, location, all those things tell the owner of the age what they are allowed to enjoy.

For example, I use to run a lot for exercise. I wasn’t fast. I was kind of like a John Deere tractor plowing deep for a new field of corn. But I could run for a while if you had a clock on me. My knees and hips, well, to be honest, most of my body, just can’t tolerate the pounding anymore. So, I bike. I know an eight-five-year-old man who plays golf a couple times a week and pickle ball in between.

There are a lot of us, still dwelling on our high school days—decades after high school. Remembering the ‘good old days.’ There are a lot of people who would tell you those days weren’t so good. But we were youthful then. Our bones still broke, but they liked to bend first. Now, well now they just shatter like crystal hitting a tile floor.

But putting a sign up across the freeway announcing we lost one AND they could be driving, well, please don’t ever let that be me my family is looking for.

“Hey, have you talked to Dad today?”

“No, not since Wednesday. Why?”

“I don’t know. I was just thinking one of the three of us probably need to do a welfare check and pretend we want to ask him how his garden is growing.”

“Does he still have a garden?”

“I dunno.”

“Hey, speaking of dad, I just got a call from the highway patrol. They called because they have him at the station.”

“WHAT?”

“Yeah, they pulled him over because he was driving erratically. He was nice to them and everything. But he had one of Grandad’s old bomber jackets on, his flight helmet and goggles and was listening to Rascal Flats ‘Life is a Highway’. Remember when we were growing up and we were in the car and he played that song?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember what he said when we asked him questions about what he was doing bobbing and weaving in and out of traffic?”

“Yeah, ‘I can’t talk now. I’m flying a plane!’ He would pull up behind some fancy car and machine gun them. He had  a great machine gun sound.”

“Yeah, well he told the state trooper the same thing. They thought they should bring him in and call us.”

“Did they say he made the machine gun noise when he got behind the car? Gosh he did that well. He would machine gun them when he drove. I miss that. He made a great machine gun noise.”

“I DON’T KNOW! Our father is driving a car, on the highway. I thought we took his keys?”

“He must have had another pair.”

“Ya think?”’

So, while the sign, graciously saying ‘silver alert’ allowing for the grey hair to be renamed silver, assuming the person still has hair, I think we should just let them go. God is everywhere. God is with them. Eventually, they will wind up in a diner in Barstow with no money and a brief awareness something is wrong and this place doesn’t look like their townhouse. Who knows, that trip to Barstow might be of God. God loves diners. Its where His kids like to hang out-or drive to when they are flying a mission, especially later in their lives. He will pour them coffee and make sure they are fed-maybe a slice of pie. They will have conversations none of the rest of us can understand or hear. But God knows and loves us, even when we think we are lost or broken like crystal.

God is everywhere and in everything. Nothing happens without Him knowing before time began. They will come back—or go Home. One of the two-as soon as the song ends and they run out of ammunition and eat their pie.

Enjoy your mission today.

Thank you Rascal Flatts for mission music!