Dear Family and Friends at               Trinity,

   I had a dream.  It was not as profound as Martin Luther King’s, “I had a dream” nor was it as Biblical as the dreams in which God spoke to heroes and non-heroes of the faith-Daniel,  Old Testament Joseph, New Testament Joseph, or the wise men, or Paul, to name a few.  But, it spoke to me!

   Considering I was on a boat, rocking and rolling on the open seas, you would think the dream might have been about boats, or boat disasters, pirates, or whales, sea otters, eagles, or porpoises, it wasn’t.  It actually was set in my farmhouse home of 50+ years ago and featured my mom and my dad.  What was particularly unsettling was how vividly and accurately the kitchen in the farmhouse, and the images of my parents were recalled.  This was so vivid, I can still recall it nearly two weeks later~

  The set up for the dream was simple.  I was an adult, working somewhere but I had promised my dad that I would make it home to attend a Ritter family gathering with his brothers and sisters,  It was extremely important to my father that I be at that reunion.  I had promised I would make it, but, not everything went as planned.  I had to work overtime, or thought I did; it happens when someone assumes they are indispensable.

Then I had a few errands that “absolutely” needed to be done but would ‘only take a few minutes’.  They took a lot of minutes.   By the time I got to the farm. it was way past the time I should have been at the Ritter gathering,  Just as I was getting ready to phone (remember this was 50+ years ago!) my aunt to see if the party was still going on, my dad and mom walked through the kitchen door.  The disappointment and hurt were evident on my father’s face, and in his voice.  “All I asked of you was two hours out of your life to be with me at something very important to me and you couldn’t even make time for that,”  The pain in that comment was evident,  I offered up all my excuses which sounded very reasonable to me, but made no impact on my dad at all.

  When I woke up the imprint of my father’s face and voice stayed with me, and raised the question for me.

I wonder if that is how God feels when we fail to spend time with Him.  I wonder if God is disappointed and hurt when we skip over appointed times to be with Him-Sunday worship. Bible studies, personal and private mediation on Scripture and prayer or helping others in His name.  I wonder if all of our excuses, good as they sound to us, ring very hollow to God’s ears and heart?  I never want to be responsible for inflicting the same kind of hurt and disappointment on my Heavenly Father as I inflicted on my earthly father in that dream. Never!

 As I thought about that, a  favorite “tongue in cheek” poem came to mind titled “No Time”. The author is unknown:

   I knelt to pray, but not for long, I had so much to do. Must hurry off and get to work, for bills would soon be due.  And so I said a hurried prayer, jumped up from off my knees; My Christian duty was now done, My soul Could be at ease.    All through the day I had no time, to speak a word of cheer, No time to speak of Christ to friends, They’d laugh at me, I feared.  No time, no time, too much to do-That was my constant cry; No time to give to those in need,  At last, ‘twas time to die.

And when before the Lord I came, I stood with downcast eyes. Within His hands He held a book-It was the Book of Life.

God looked into His Book and said, “Your name, I cannot find. I once was going to write it down, but Never found the time”.          

Blessings             

~Pastor Penny~