I was going to begin this post with the quote from Benjamin Franklin to the effect that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy, but it seems that he never said it. So I have to begin a bit more prosaically.
We have had to move out of our house, and we are trying to do it on the cheap, so we have ended up having to do a lot of running around and heavy lifting. Between age and the hot weather, it is very tiring.
Much more frustrating, though, is that we have not found a place to move to. Not only that, we don’t know how we are going to finance the work we’ve wanted to do since we were married, helping churches in cultural minority groups to incorporate local music styles into the life of the church. And I really think the message I’ve been trying to get across in this blog is something that would help the church more effectively fulfill the Great Commission, but so far it has been just me and the tumbleweed out here in the wilderness.
On Friday, after a long day of chasing down a truck to borrow and then moving our beds, I was pretty much worn out. I didn’t care what I ate for dinner. All I knew was that I wanted to wash it down with a bottle of beer.
Now the owner of the truck is a good friend, and he always has beer on hand, but I don’t feel like our relationship is such that I can simply show up and ask him for a beer. And I don’t feel like our budget allows me to buy it. So I was resigned to, I don’t know, yet another Chick Fil-A dinner and ice water.
We arrived with the truck, my friend’s wife invited us for dinner—my wife had been craving green beans, and there they were in the mélange—and got my wife some ice water. There was a bottle of beer right there on the table in an insulated sleeve, but it was my friend’s, and his wife offered me … ice water.
The darkest hour is just before dawn. Resurrection power works best in graveyards. Name your cliché, it fit. Before I could open my mouth to thank them for the gracious offer—after all, it was hot and my mouth was dry—my friend grabbed a beer out of the fridge and put it in an insulated sleeve just for me and my drinking pleasure.
This was a growing experience for me.
I’ve always pooh-poohed the “God of the parking spaces.” With people being killed and tortured and jailed for their faith in Christ, others having lost their families and jobs because they follow Jesus, others driven from their homes by war or brigands, others suffering from diseases and disabilities, others going years without being able to find employment that pays their bills or that matches their gifts, how selfish can it be to pray that God will provide a parking space close to the store or, get real, beer for dinner?
If the most important thing I’ve got going in my life is what I drink with dinner, then I can hear Morgan Freeman in The Bucket List saying, “I’ve seen swimming pools deeper than you.” But like I said, Ginny and I both are searching for ways to use our gifts for the kingdom.
Maybe the lesson I should be taking away from this is that wanting to do what we want to do “for the Lord” is just as selfish as wanting a good parking space or beer with dinner. But what I took away was the prayer I prayed with Ginny after we finally got the old house cleaned up: “Lord, if you were kind enough to answer my selfish longing for beer for dinner, I think I can trust you to find us a house that will allow us to be close to a church we can serve in and close to neighbors we can reach for you, and you can lead us to people who can profit from our gifts.”
Maybe that beer was, if not proof then at least good evidence that God loves me.
Or we may both die or be stricken with Alzheimer’s tomorrow. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. But those moments of optimism were a foretaste of heaven.
