We continue to be lucky with the weather. Between yesterday and today we didn’t have to ride in any temperature over 77 degrees, and today never got above 70 while on the road. Though everyone keeps worrying about us and the weather we must be going through, we can only laugh because we’ve always been a day or two late or early to get hit by storms.
I was planning on writing the last installment of the Massachusetts mini-series today, but it requires that I have access to my e-mail which I do not at the moment. We are having a lot of difficulty connecting to the Internet. And I was going to write something clever about Thomas Jefferson and slaves (because his famous residence was named, “Monticello”), but in the last hour I’ve changed my mind about everything anyway.
Since we arrived here a bit early we decided to get lunch before checking into our hotel. We wouldn’t have made that decision if there weren’t a restaurant conveniently right next door to the Best Western we’re staying at. I’m reminded of the strange black substance that we’ve found on many of the roads out here that makes the road extremely smooth, helping me preserve energy and speed, in that regardless of our not knowing what the substance is God provides it for us anyway, like manna in the desert. God seems to be at work even when we think we are just ordinarily living our life.
You see, at the restaurant we ate at our waiter asked us if we had just come in on a bike (she had seen my cycling jersey). We told her that we had and that we were on a cross-country bike trip so the 40 miles that we did today was not that big of a deal (she seemed concerned about our health when she heard that we had not simply ridden from Champaign but from Rantoul). After our waitress walked away, a kind lady from the table next to us said that she had overheard our conversation and was very interested in what we were doing and why. Now, she and her table were very nearly done with their meals, so if we had checked into the hotel first and then sat down to eat we would have missed each other entirely.
Instead of simply being interested, though, she requested that I give her my information, and Thomas was generous enough to go out to the car and get her my card and some Polaris Project flyers while I stayed and chatted with her about the state of slavery in the world and in our country. We had a nice little chat, she read my card and the flyers promising to hand them out to some of her friends, and then out of the blue she gave me $20. Without even stipulating that I pass on the money to Polaris Project (which I am going to do, of course) she gave me the money and told me to use it however I thought best, and then she left with a simple, “God bless.” Quite honestly it was the best experience of this entire trip for me. The woman went out of her way to find out what we are doing because of one little thing she heard me say and ended up getting involved in her small way within twenty minutes. I was floored, and I am so very thankful to God for giving us that opportunity.
To add icing to the cake, as we were leaving someone else said that he had overheard the conversation that I had had with the kind woman, and he asked some more questions. I couldn’t handle the chain of events: our waitress sees my jersey and asks if we were biking, someone overhears and asks questions, then someone else overhears that conversation and asks more questions. As St. Paul says somewhere (I’m too lazy to get my Bible out and I certainly don’t have it memorized), plant a seed and someone else will water it. One person’s comment planted a seed in someone that I then watered, and in turn I left knowing that I had planted a seed in some other people. I trust that God will water those seeds. Of all the seeds that I’ve planted on this trip without having the opportunity to water them, I trust that God will take it from there.
No comments:
Post a Comment