Have you, like me, ever found yourself recalling some obscure or strange snippet of an event while other details of the happening weren't as important? This week I've been thinking about a trip we took to Toronto approximately forty years ago. We'd been married three years and our first born son was a couple of years old when we decided to visit family in Ontario. I have a photo of Len playing on their backyard swing but nothing else really stands outwith one exception: coming back from a trip north of the city, we ran out of gas at night and in a bedroom community near Toronto. Frankly I wondered if we would ever get home.
My brother-in-law tried knocking on doors but who is going to open their house to a stranger asking to use the phone? Not only that, how many households have cans of gasoline available on request? I don't recall how it came to be resolved but I do remember the mixture of anxiety that we'd spend the night in the car, parked on a rural road and the frustration (near anger) that brother-in-law refused to listen to those who advised he fuel up the car before setting out. I was most thankful that things turned out alright and we got back around midnight.
That story was dragged from my memory bank by other musings this week: it is all too easy to let our spiritual "gauge" hover perilously close to empty. Work, even work for God drains our emotional, physical and spiritual energy and that can have disastrous results.
"For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure."
A full tank takes us places, geographically and spiritually; running on "spiritually empty" leaves us vulnerable at the times we need power most.
