Good. Now if you subtract 1 Alvin and later, after Saskatoon, you plan to add 1 David (David is Captain Ed’s son) how many men should you have on your bus as you leave men’s camp? (10) Do you think we could get that right? With nine men on the bus doing a head count we came up with anywhere from 6– 11 people present and we were quite content with that until someone eventually asked, ‘where’s Tim?’ Sure enough as soon as we pulled out of the camp, down came Tim to where the bus was supposed to be and we were already gone - leaving Tim standing at the path wondering what had happened and why we had left without him. (His pastor and another pastor and all of his friends from the church)
Now to be fair to all of us in the bus who did leave Tim behind, we did come back as soon as we realized our error. And when we were doing our head counts, just as we were pulling out without Tim, I did ask anyone who wasn’t there before we left to raise their hand and speak up now or we’d leave them behind and Tim – Tim didn’t speak up to let us know that we’d left him behind.
We did get Tim and were joking with him most of the way back – all the way through Saskatoon anyway, through Delisle. We were joking as we were talking about how we could be so ‘out of it’ that someone could be left behind when all of a sudden, Ed pulled the bus over to the side of the highway: “we forgot David”, he said. In all our excitement in mocking ourselves for forgetting Tim, Ed –who was driving – and we completely forgot to pick up Ed’s son, David, in Saskatoon. To make a much longer story short, we called two other people who were in Saskatoon and they kindly picked up David and brought him to Swift Current where they rendezvoused with Ed and then they continued on home.
I think often times we – if you are anything like me – can fail to see God in our ministry and life, the way we failed to see who was or was not on this bus from camp. Today I encourage us to slow down and make sure that God is on board before we proceed with our plans.
A more accurate way to convey this same thought would actually to make sure that we are actually on God's bus, before we pull away. It is He we want to drive us, for He is the only one who really knows where we need to go...
I encourage us to pray and ask that the Lord's will, not ours, be done today.
More daily blogs at
Posts
