Big Things; Little Delays
Because there was an online problem with this web site, I anticipated a one or two day delay to get it sorted out. My first task was to get it back up and working. When trying to open it, users would get a “secure protocol” error. As the owner and administrator of my domain, I would get a login error. My username and password were being accepted, and I could see my dashboard, but I was unable to access anything because my access was “unapproved”. Before leaving Dalton, I had spoken with a tech support person about this issue and he also ran into problems, so he had escalated the issue to the troubleshooting team. Now in Savannah, I wanted to learn what they had found out. At the library, to my surprise and delight, I was able to access everything and when browsing to my domain as a user, everything opened. Yeah! Nothing more to worry about, right?
So Close, Yet So Far
The stop at the library included walking to the library, getting signed up for internet access, unpacking my laptop, checking the site status, repacking my laptop, choosing were to spend the night, and walking to where I would spend the night. Pretty much, that burned up the entire afternoon. Evening arrived before my destination arrived, so I covered the last mile in darkness. Not blackness, but not enough light to make out obsticles in the path. The road I followed was actually a major road, four lanes with a center turn lane, but it had no sidewalks. Being a seacoast city, Savannah’s natural soil is very sandy, so the grasses, flowers, and weeds are kept at bay, at least as compared to Dalton. Still, the sandy soil was slightly uneven and moving across it in the dark was slow going. About 400 yards from the hotel, I encountered a drainage manhole cover that was about 10″ lower than the current height of the sandy soil. I saw it and walked by it without stumbling, but one wheel of the trailer slipped over the edge and the trailer took a tumble. I had to unload it to put it upright on level ground again. When I did, I discovered that the handle had broken off. Instead of something to grasp or attach to my belt, all I had were two jagged aluminum tubes sticking up at me from the rear axle. So close! But still so far! And it was just the first day of a very long journey.
Making Repairs
My intention had been to check in overnight and continue my walk at daybreak. I was now about 5 miles off the Greenway and would have to retrace my steps before I could begin making progress. “Best laid plans…” and all that. Anticipating that it might take all day on Thursday to get to a Lowes or Home Depot or something similar, and that repairs could take hours on Friday, I decided to stay through Saturday, find a church on Sabbath, and depart Sunday morning.
As expected, it did take me all day Thursday to buy repair supplies. Walking would have taken up about four hours for a round trip, not to mention carrying my purchases, I chose to take Savannah’s bus transit system. So instead, I took up four hours waiting for transfers to and from Home Depot, mostly in the hot sun, and entirely without benches to rest on. I bought an 8′ 2×2 board and had it cut in half to attach to and extend the aluminum tubes. I bought four hose clamps, the kind with a thread bolt that tightens a band with angled slots. I also bought an inexpensive corded electric drill both for tightening the hose clamps and for drilling and tapping holes for bolts that I could use to attach bungie cords to. My last item was to purchase two tennis balls that I would turn into grips so that the rough, square edges of the ends of the 2×2’s would not cause me injury or discomfort.
A Chance to Sightsee
As it turned out, the repairs were much easier to accomplish than I had expected, so I pretty much had Friday to sightsee Savannah a little bit. It is truly a beautiful city. The trees, everywhere, are covered in Spanish Moss. The effect is a feeling of swamps and pirates and fireflies, of a slower pace of life, of hidden secrets and mystical magic. The thing that I thought of, however, was how the trees and moss were the perfect contrast between God’s Kingdom and Satan’s Dominion over the Earth.
How God Rules the Universe
God’s Kingdom operates as any government does: with rules. We often refer to the Ten Commandments (see Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5) as God’s rules. In fact, the Ten Commandments are God’s adaptations of a greater rule of the Universe. Just as Physics has rules (often described by mathematical formulas) called “Forces” which science has been trying to reduce to a single unified theory (unsuccessfully, so far), the Ten Commandments have been reduced to two Great Commandments by Jesus Christ, and those two Great Commandments both spring from a single methodology that God uses to govern: LOVE.
Underlying the infinite wisdom and imagination of God’s Creation is a single principle: Everything, whether animate or inanimate, it doesn’t matter, but everything in the universe exists to serve everything else. Nothing exists to serve itself. That is the government of love.
How Satan Would Rule the Universe
We can see exactly how Satan would rule the universe, if he could. When he successfully tempted Eve first, then Adam, to disrespect God, he stole dominion over the earth from humanity. Everything about Creation, as it applies specifically to Earth, and to Earth alone, has been distorted and manipulated to follow Satan’s methodology for ruling. Anton LaVey founded The Church of Satan and the religion of Satanism. He claimed that unlike God’s Ten Commandments, Satan had only One Commandment: “Thou shalt do as thou wilt. There is no other law.”
Selfishness. That is the government of Satan. We see it operating in all governments on Earth, in all religions, even Christianity, in all human relationships, cultures, nationalities, races, politics, and interactions. We also see it in the natural world around us, even in inanimate nature. The rain erodes the soil. The ocean reduces stone to sand. The wind uproots trees and demolishes both man-made and God-created structures. Creatures large and small are either predators or prey. Prey huddle together so that the odds of any individual are improved by misfortune of other individuals. Plant eaters overgraze, become territorial, rivalry abounds everywhere.
Love and Selfishness At War
In the trees of Savannah, we can witness the governments of Love and Selfishness at war with one another. The trees provide protection and nourishment for the Spanish Moss, but the Spanish Moss eventually kills the trees, then dies itself, deprived of its source of nutrients.
Understanding God, and accepting the reality that sin exists become so simple when we see how the two forms of government work. Love provides for others. Sin takes for itself. All sin, without exception, stems from selfishness. How do you recognize sin? Look for the selfishness behind it. How do you recognize the truth about God? Look for the selfless service to any, each, all, and everything.
Who Is Winning?
Looking at the Savannah trees, it is easy to think that selfishness wins. It doesn’t. The wages of sin is death and the instant the Spanish Moss kills the tree, it too, dies. The government of Satan is a ticking timebomb. Even atheists can see that humanity is on the same extinction path as the Spanish Moss. We are egotistically hoping that science can undo the harm we have caused to the environment, the economy, the food and water supply, the habitability of the planet, but the truth is, we didn’t do this alone. The possessor of dominion over the Earth did this, and it is unrepairable unless it is recreated.
Our days are numbered, our demise — and our deliverance — foretold in God’s Word. Isn’t it time to stop trusting ourselves and start trusting God’s government?
Another Delay
Wednesday afternoon my Fitbit watch ran out of power. I packed a charger for every other device I brought along but I forgot that I periodically have to charge my watch. On Thursday I called my sister and told her she had seen the Fitbit charger while helping me organize my stuff for giving away. She said she had and she had kept it out of the giveaway items! She said she would ship it for next day delivery if I would text her the address of th hotel. Well, Thursday being an all-day shopping trip, and not knowing the address, it was late Thursday evening before I arrived back and obtained the address. She went to the Post Office and mailed it Overnight Priority. I was already scheduled to stay through Saturday night, but of course this now was dependent on the charger arriving on Saturday.
I went to the closest Adventist Church, about two and a half miles from the Hotel. It was a church with an all-black membership, not out of segregation, but out of its local population. I was warmly greeted anyway and felt welcome, blessed, and at home. At the end of the service, I was invited to stand and introduce myself. Afterward, standing outside and talking with people, I had an opportunity to share a brief version of my Looking Back story of gaining a relationship with Jesus for the first time in my life when He called me Sparrow.
I went to the front desk sometime after 5 pm to see if my sister’s package had come. It had not. It for sure wasn’t going to arrive on Sunday, so I would need to stay until after 5 pm on Monday so I extended my stay through Monday night with a new departure date of Tuesday morning.
The Reason for All the Delays Revealed
Sunday morning, Debbie, the woman I had given my testimony to on Sabbath after the church service, called me to ask when I was leaving or if I had already left. I told her about the latest delay. She was overjoyed! She said she had told a friend about me, and the friend wanted to talk to me.
Monday morning, I called Debbie. I asked her when the friend wanted to talk to me. She said she would have her friend call me to make arrangements. The friend told me that she had to work until 7 pm and would call me again when she got off work. Well, things didn’t work out quite that way, but she called around 5 pm.
She was still at work, and it was looking now that she would be there until after 8 pm. I asked her if there was anything in particular that she wanted to talk about. That got her started and we talked for an hour and a half as she worked. I was blessed with some of her insights (and have made some changes to my home page as a result) and when we finished, she told me that some of my insights had been tremendously helpful to her. Praise God for the delays!! What a wonderful week it has been a-walking. (That means “not walking” as putting an “a” prefix on a word negates the meaning of the word. It is also a Southern way of saying “walking”.)
Loving your skilled commentary, Sparrow!