Sweet Mother of Troy...

You know, people have come to me before and said that I was a fairly intelligent guy. (HA! Funny). But no one has ever accused me of being smart, unless there's a three letter word attached to the end. :) 

Anyway, as I was looking through my blog, I found one that I had never published. It was much too good to pass up. 

As many of you know, I don't always do the smartest things. This is one such story of my sheer brilliance at work.  

As all of you know, I live in Texas. And the best way that I can describe it for those of you who have never had the misfortune of visiting Texas on a sweltering summer day, is to relate a conversation that I had with my mom to you.

It was about midway through the beginning of the summer, and she asked me, "Is it hot down there?" And as I thought about it, I said, "Mama, it's hot.... Well.... Mama, it's hot as hell down here." Immediately I caught what I had said and apologized, "Mama, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be vulgar, but that's the only thing that I can think of at the moment." (I literally could not think of a better example… there was none.)

Now, having this awareness of the atrocious Texas heat, you would think that I would stay away from it. That I would run away from it like a fat kid getting chased by a dietician (is that wrong?). However, like I said, I'm definitely not the smartest kid in class. (and definitely not the most PC)

So what did I decide to do? I've got an idea; let's go run. Now, I'm eating dinner with my next-door neighbors at 7pm later that night, so I should probably go ahead and ignore the fact that it's 1 in the afternoon and it just so happens to be the hottest part of the day as well. And you know, there's absolutely no cloud cover either. Things are looking on the up and up!

So I decide to go running. But that's not the end of it, oh no! I decide that running on flat ground or on a treadmill is boring (which it is). So I decide to go run 3 miles down by TCU. Now, for our purposes, let's just say that there's 4 sides to the campus (which there pretty much are). Now two of them are flat, one has a slight incline, and the other one has the only steep hill in all of Ft Worth. So which did I choose? Yep... the steep side. And on top of all this, I hadn't trained to run at all. I mean, nothing. There was no preparation whatsoever. My friends, I thought that I was going to die.

I was just about at the end of my rope, when I decided to push on just a tad bit farther. I knew that there was a small park about .2 mile further down the road, so instead of stopping and turning around, I decide that I'd make it to the park and to the shade of it's trees. And that's just what I did.

Much to my elation, what did I see but a grungy old water fountain. You know the one…. it had green corrosion all around the drinking spigot, and leaves from the trees had fallen in it and clogged the drain. And the only thing that I could think of was, “SWEET MOTHER OF TROY, THE LORD HAS LOOKED DOWN ON MY AFFLICTION AND HEARD MY CRY FOR HELP!!!” (ok, that may be a tad bit much, but you get what I’m saying) I had never, nor have I ever since, been so excited about drinking out of a nasty faucet.

I returned to my car after a long and tedious climb up what seemed like Everest herself with the Saharan sun beating me mercilessly as if I was tied to it’s whipping post. It was on that day that I vowed never to do such a stupid thing again.

But before I let you go, humor me this and allow me to probe the heart of my readers…

Is this just a funny story about an idiot running at the completely wrong time of day in Texas, and justly getting what he deserved, or does it reach further than that?

I paralleled this to my own spiritual life, and the results where somewhat disturbing. Often times, I decide to jump into things without consulting the Lord, and His guidance. I fail to take note of the “spiritual climate” all around me and find myself parched and strung out on my journey of sanctification.

However, looking back, I notice all those many times when the Lord provided the water that my spirit needed to continue on.

It is by the mercy of God that He grants us these oases when often times we are strung out due to our own brash choices.

Consider the times when He has provided an oasis that He didn’t have to, and take a minute to thank Him for it.

-Jeff