Live Twitter Novel:
The Substance of Things Hoped For
Chapter 3: The First Day of Kindergarten
-Our story continues: "Pastor Jones woke up angry." If he was writing this, Jones would probably self censor and say, "Pastor Jones woke up a bit annoyed." But the truth of the matter was that Pastor Jones woke up angry. Angry at himself and angry with his congregation.
He certainly wasn't angry with God--well, at least not this time. Pastor Jones was angry and jealous. These feelings had been bubbling to the surface for quite some time. He was jealous of the early church depicted in the Book of Acts. Acts had become one of his favorite books of the Bible after he spent over a year covering it in Bible study. Acts appealed to his boyhood sense of adventure, his love of God and provided a new found understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit.
This morning, Pastor Jones was determined to do something about his anger. As he sat down in his study, this very morning, to work on his sermon, he glanced out the apartment window. The blinds were slightly askew and he could see people walking by and they could look up, and with a little effort, see him.
Last night, he placed a Japanese style screen in front of the blinds as he was unable to close them tight. A few days ago, the plastic rod thingy, which turned the blinds, broke off in his hand. He was determined to fix it, but for a thing which appeared to be so simple in design, it was becoming far too time consuming for him to fool with.
He made several attempts to put the turning rod back in place, but the doggone thing wouldn't work. Jones was all set to call apt. management and have them send someone up to fix it, but Jones lost the thing last night.
So, he glanced out the window and thought, "Well, perhaps the Lord wants those blinds to stay open a bit so that you can look out while writing." Writing was something he was doing a lot of these days.
The Holy Spirit was unlocking doors in his mind. It was like using an iPad, although Jones didn't have one, he understood how it worked and as a visual thinker, the notion of moving pages and things with one's finger was an apt metaphor for how his mind worked.
Pastor Jones saw things three dimensionally in his mind. He first realized this ability on the first day of Kindergarten, some 40 odd years ago. He recalled that his mom said she would pick him up after school.
Well, Jones, waiting--after what seemed like enough time, in his little Kindergarten mind--decided to walk home. It wasn't difficult at all. He could visualize the path home as if he were looking down from above.
As a adult, he would use big words and phrases to describe this ability as, "I see things topographically. As if I were looking at Google Maps or Street View."
That first day of Kindergarten, in Cleveland, Ohio, Jones walked home and sat on the porch waiting for his mom.
She finally arrived and he vaguely remembered her crying.
She would tell him years later that she feared the worse that day. She was just a little late and couldn't find him and drove around and around in tears until she came back home, just two blocks from the school, to find him waiting for her.
They both could laugh at the incident now, but Pastor Jones had kids of his own and could only imagine how terrified his mother must have been to arrive at school to pick up your child and he's nowhere to be found! On the first day of school!
Nowadays, whenever Jones learned of a missing child on the news, he would stop to pray for them. Jones made it a habit to pray for folks facing terrible circumstances whenever he encountered a sad new story.
This practice was beginning to get to him and he often refrained from watching the local evening news, or just turned away from sad stories after praying for folks.
Pastor Jones felt much better as he sat in silence in front of his new computer. Jones didn't want to spend any money on a new computer, but the old family laptop constantly crashed or was taken over by some stupid virus.
He didn't want to go into debt, but prayed about it and bought his first Macintosh computer of the modern era. He had two Macs sitting next to his desk, from the late 1990s. He kept telling himself that when he had time, he would continue to transfer early digital pictures of the kids, as toddlers from the old Macs, onto floppy disk, the to the PC.
It was just too time consuming at present, but he knew it had to be done at some point before even those Macs no longer worked.
Pastor Jones was feeling a lot better after breakfast and a very hot bath. He thought, once again, that he was sleepy and was preparing to take a morning nap, but the Holy Spirit told him, "Just get something to eat and sit down to write."
Jones was tired, but was trusting the Lord with great confidence that he would indeed take a nap, or get rest when needed.
This morning, Jones was tired, and needed his glasses to read his main study Bible--despite the fact that it was a large print, Charles Stanley edition of the New King James.
Author's note: Takin' a break. Our story will continue in a moment (I'm imagining the voice of the old Hallmark Hall of Fame announcer when those Hallmark sponsored and produced TV movies would come on around Thanksgiving time.
The announcer's voice would be as warm as the turkey stuffing we would eat that night.
Man, I'm getting hungry, yet I'm still full from breakfast. Better start planning that Turkey Day menu soon. I'll try to add one new item to the menu we haven't had before, just to keep things interesting each year.
Okay, now I'm going to get off the path to memory lane and take a long break. Me eyes are tired and watery, mon. Nap time, Lord? Huh, please, Lord, pretty please? : )
