My Weekend In 3 Emails (or how to be a jerk without really trying)

Topic:  Seriously?

Dear Ice Machine People,

I just purchased two dollars worth of ice from your machine on Old Collinsville Road in Fairview Heights (O’Fallon?) Illinois. That’s all I needed. Sadly, after reading every word on your machine, I used a twenty-dollar bill. I received my ice in fine fashion and was quite pleased. I pushed the button for change and received... tokens. Tokens? Really? I don’t need eighteen dollars in tokens. I don’t WANT eighteen dollars in tokens. I want eighteen dollars. Cash. American money. I’m a little bit perturbed at the moment. I buy very little ice. Today I’m having a block party and I needed extra. I have one block party per year. At my current rate of ice consumption I will be eighty years old when I use my last token. I don’t have eighteen more block parties in me. 

Bottom line. There is a Casey’s a block from you I’ve always used when I do need ice. I thought I’d try you out. New business and all. But you managed to chase me right back to Casey’s. And I’ve made a sign I’m posting at my block party warning everyone about your machine. And I’ve asked them to pass the word. I’m giving them all one of your crummy tokens to remind them.  

You know, giving tokens as change is fine IF you say so on your machine. I can absorb an eighteen dollar hit. What if I was a single mom stretching every dollar? That reminds me, I need to mention this tomorrow at the church I Pastor. And at the food pantry we host. 

Could be an expensive eighteen dollar gain. Not cool, ice machine people. Not cool. 

Ron Woods

Topic:  Ummm

Dear Ice Machine People...

My bad. One dollar coins, huh?  I must admit I’ve seen silver dollars. I’ve seen Susan B. Anthony coins. But until this very day I had never seen a copper colored one dollar coin. My block party pointed out the error of my ways (though they did keep the “tokens” I passed out.) They are, as I type on my phone, pointing and laughing at me. Can’t say as how I blame them. Still, these things won’t fold in my wallet no matter how I try. 

I humbly apologize and will promote your Ice Machine at every opportunity. I am a bad, bad, man. Can I buy you lunch?

SINcerely,
Ron Woods
Swansea’s Own Homer Simpson

Topic: re: Ummm...

Ron,

We owe you lunch!................rarely do we have a customer, who is as honest as you have been, concerning your experience with our Ice House unit.......we are all from Southern Illinois(I live in Flora, IL.) and pride ourselves, on both saving our customers money, AND keeping the funds in the Southern Illinois market.

I'm in the Metro East market, on a weekly basis and would really like to introduce myself..................we decided to give change with $1 coins instead of $.25 ( you would of have received 72 quarters) to make it a better customer experience.

I've attached an Illinois market map, for your use, which shows all of our units.

Thanks again for your support...................contact us ANYTIME with your thoughts concerning your experience with our business model!

Rick

Rick Fritschle
President
Hoosier Ice LLC

Let Your Words Be Few

It ought not be this way.

To awake in the morning and find that a long time saint in my church had passed away overnight was difficult but not unexpected.  Discovering that over fifty innocents were viciously executed by an evil man with high powered rifles from his lofty perch in a hotel room overlooking a crowd?  That is a cold slap in the face.  That is too difficult to handle.  It defies any hope I have of wrapping my mind around it.  Fifty-plus bodies on the hard sidewalks of a desert city. Bloodless bodies.  Voiceless bodies.  Bodies that would lay there for eternity if no one picks them up. The video's revealing the staccato cadence of automatic weapons firing on the innocents.  Automatic weapons that are not legal anywhere in our country. First the tears come and then the blood boils.  I feel my fangs growing like those of a rabid dog ready to pounce on whoever perpetrated this insanity.

The voices are already crying out.  "Why?  Why did this happen?" The Bible's answer is clear.  Because evil exists.   Because the planet is broken.  Because the results of that evil and brokenness is more evil and brokenness. 

Jesus told a story in Luke 13.  It seems that Pilate had his soldiers murder some Galileans who were worshipping. Pretty cold blooded, wouldn't you say?  Kind of like Las Vegas last night.  The question posed to Jesus was the same one we pose.  "Why did that happen?"  Jesus reply was enormously relevant for their day and ours.  "Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other people from Galilee?  Is that why they suffered? Not at all!  And you will perish, too, unless you repent of your sins and turn to God.  And what about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem?  No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish too."

Jesus wanted to squash an idea quickly for all time.  Our chances of being the victim of a catastrophe is not determined by the level of our sinfulness.  He wanted it made clear that all of us ... ALL OF US ... deserve the painful and deadly results of living on the broken planet because we were the ones who broke it.  When we chose to disobey God rather than to obey Him, we set off a chain reaction of very bad things. People without God go mad.  People without God do evil things.  People without God attack other people.  And sometimes bad things just happen for what seems no reason at all.  Maybe a tower falls on you.  A tower that nobody pushed over.  As a pastor, one of the godliest people I ever buried was a young woman who repeatedly battled leukemia until it finally took her life in her early twenties.  The tower of cancer fell on her.  Who pushed it?  Who can I point a finger at and demand retribution from?  Well.   We all pushed it when we invited sin into our world and thumbed our noses at God.  Jesus wants us to know that He cares very much ... but the truth is ... we all deserve a tower to fall on us.  So before you start pointing fingers at those you believe are most responsible for the evil  perpetrated last night in a desert city in our homeland, remember the words of Jesus, "...unless you repent, you will perish too." Was the shooter insane?  You bet he was. Was he evil?  Absolutely.  If he had survived should he be held accountable?  Yes ... for every single bullet fired and every single life stolen.  But before you start throwing around the blame to those you would call his "enablers," remember this.  I broke this world when I agreed with those before me who invited sin into it.  And so did you.  Nobody deserves to have a finger pointed at them today.  Everybody deserves to have a finger pointed at them today.

God help us.

I have no answers today for how to fix the evil embedded in our nation, other than the advice that Jesus gave.  And so I repent.  I repent for being one of the sin-filled people that brought us to this place.  And then I choose to live out Ecclesiastes 5:2, "...God is in heaven, and you are here on earth. So let your words be few."

What's Wrong With Me?

It's not officially summer, yet somehow I have already developed a case of the summer doldrums.  (What kind of word is that?  "Doldrums."  It sounds like a flower.  Or maybe a disease.  Or perhaps a flower that causes a disease. "I caught the doldrums and, Lordy, I thought I was gonna die!") I spent the morning in the office today and then went off to have lunch with God and a friend.  Not that God isn't my friend. I just felt like some flesh and blood might be nice.  No matter.  My friend didn't show up.  God did.

So we talked.

"Excuse me, God.  I think I have the doldrums."

"Is that a flower?"

"With all due respect, Sir, you made them.  I think you would know if it were."

That's is pretty much how it went.  Me, complaining about my current state of placid soulfulness. Him, listening without so much as an occasional "Uh-huh. Tell me more." But, as I explained to Jehovah, life is good.  Everybody is healthy except an occasional puking spell by a grandchild (I'm looking at you, Liam Kelly.) Our church is doing well except that three of my best friends are moving away thanks to an eternally restless United States Air Force.  The Cubs are hovering around .500 which is a sad surprise.  I guess it's still early and I haven't written them off yet.  So I have no real reason for the doldrums.

But there they are.

Then my phone rang.  It was a funeral home.  Somebody died and they want me to do the funeral.  I don't know them, so I don't know how they know me.  Maybe I'm becoming known locally as, "Mr. Funeral?" I don't know how I feel about that.  Anyway, I said I would do the service on Friday morning.  Then, as funeral directors are apt to do, they dropped the other shoe.

"I feel that I should tell you that this family is a bit ... "

"It's alright.  This is a safe place.  Just say it."

"Eccentric.  And ..."

"Yes?"

"Belligerent."

"Oh.  Now that's probably something I would have liked to know before I agreed to this event, don't you think?"

"They did ask for you by name. Are you sure you don't know them?"

"I don't know them."

"One of them is married to his third cousin.  His name is David.  And his name is Curt. They like to dress alike.  And Curt likes to push people around.  I buried their mother and ... I think second cousin.  Yeah.  Second cousin."

"David's mother is Curt's second cousin?"

"Correct."

"David is married to Curt."

"I think you've got it."

"Do they have children?"

"Probably not."

"Anything else you think I should know?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"See you Friday."

Guys.  I can't make stuff like this up. 

That's when I noticed ... adrenaline.  Adrenaline!  My old friend!  I've missed you!  And the doldrums ... they vanished!  I just needed a good dose of eccentricity!  Have you ever noticed God seems to work best when life is its most unpredictable?  At least, that's been true in my life.  So now I am just waiting and praying for Friday.  David and Curt and the entire family will get to hear about Jesus!  And I get to live out the reason I was created in the first place.

And I'd like to thank my friend for not showing up for lunch.  It was the best lunch we never had!

Hot Buttered Rob (don't ask)

(Dear Rob ... This one is for you.  It's been a couple of great years.  Thanks for all the Salmon and donuts. Now get out there and make the world safe for my grandkids...

Ron)

So I have a friend who thinks I should keep blogging.  Let's call him "Rob."  Because that is his name.  I gave this space up a few months back because, well, I guess because I've been writing here for ten years and I had said everything I could think of to say. And now, since I speak a couple of times each week in a formal setting, I pretty much pour my creative energies into that endeavor.  It doesn't always leave much juice for writing words that you really are not certain anybody is going to read.  Actually, I read a few of my own entries and, well, if I am boring you as badly as I bored me, I need to stop doing that.  Pastor's ought not bore people when they speak.  Or write.  And these last efforts ... let's just say "the juice wasn't worth the squeeze." 

And then Rob called me on it.  I told him what I just told you and he understood.  I think he did.  He didn't like, nag me or anything.  But here is the thing.  When a guy is vain enough to expect people to come and hear him speak or go to a web site and read what he writes, it only takes a little stroking to motivate him to keep going.  That's why the people in my church refrain from shouting, "AMEN!"  They know they are just encouraging me and it will go straight to me head and suddenly we are all late for the lunch line.  At least that is what I tell myself.  The other possible reasons they don't shout are worse for my self-confidence (think: ego) and so I choose not to entertain those thoughts.

Rob and I were out to dinner last weekend with our lovely wives.  We ate until we nearly put a Brazilian Steakhouse into bankruptcy.  I do not know about him but I was nearing "meat coma status."  So we did the natural thing.  We went out for donuts.  Specifically, we went to "Strange Donuts" in Kirkwood. Strange donuts is, well, strange.  I ate a simple "General Custard."  I think Rob had a double something with pixie dust on it and maybe a dash of chili powder.  That isn't impossible at Strange Donuts.  Nothing is impossible at Strange Donuts.

And that is when I noticed a t-shirt on the wall that they sell to suckers who just cannot stop spending money.  (Hello, me!) It featured this dark skinned fellow who was coated in nacho cheese.  He looked middle-eastern.  Over his head they had printed his name.  "Cheesus."  Yup.  Get it?  Cheesus?  Jesus?  It's not that funny now.  With a gut full of Brazilian food and American custard it was hilarious.  So, naturally I bought the shirt. 

I took the shirt home.

I never took it out of the bag.

I went to bed.

I woke up at 2:30AM.

I heard the still small voice of you-know-who saying ... "Really?  Really, Ron?  You just taught my people last week on the wonder and the majesty of My Name.  And now you are going to wear a shirt that says "Cheesus" next to a very poor caricature of me?  I've made better looking camels than that guy."  (Okay, He didn't exactly say that last part about the caricature and the camels.  But I'm betting He was thinking it.  Sometimes even God picks His battles?)

I apologized.  Profoundly.  I mourned my sin.

I realized I had to destroy the shirt.

I mourned my twenty dollars.

Do you see what effect Rob has on me?  He makes me more like Jesus but (sometimes) he allows me to drag myself through the muck first. He's a smart guy.  He's some kind of Colonel in the United States Air Force, for crying out loud.  He knows big multi-syllable words like "airplane," and "runway."  He studied 3D printers once and actually convinced me he could recreate my entire family tree if he just had the right printer cartridge.  Or something like that.  I may have that wrong.  But the guy holds sway over my life.

And now my friend is moving.  He's going the way of Adam Page and Alex Babbot.  The way of Tom Goble and Matthew Beeman.  The way of Michael Harris and Brant Dixon.   The way of Jake Lukens and Dan Werner.  And soon the way of Mark Amos and Josh Hunt.  There are more.  Lot's more. I just named the ones that passed through my Friday night small group. 

Rob is confusing and frustrating me right up to his last day.  He sings about the wild blue yonder but he's leaving to go to Navy War College.  (The best I can figure, it's like seminary for people who blow stuff up.)  Go figure. 

So this one is for you, Rob!  May your vapor trails be high and your 3D printers have ample juice.  And I promise that every time I have a strange donut I'll be thinking of the way you use to blow chocolate milk out of your nose.  (And now the world knows.  What are friends for?)

10-4.  Roger Wilco.  Over and out.  But most of all ... God bless, my friend.