God’s Sense of Humor

I’ve heard it said before that God does indeed have a sense of humor. That was pretty evident for us today. In many ways. Robin was cooking this morning (spaghetti for the masses) and at several points I looked at her incredulously. Who is this person in my wife’s body? Has she really forgotten all those things she learned about cooking for this many people? When the spice bottle did a swan dive out of the kitchen cabinet and splattered spaghetti sauce all over her pretty pink shirt? Yeah, that was a minor thing. When the spaghetti strainer with enough cooked spaghetti to feed half of Omaha fell from her grasp and I watched it fall to the floor in slow motion, only steps away but totally helpless? This turned out to be a minor thing also, but could have been a bit of a catastrophe, considering we didn’t have time to re-cook a new batch of spaghetti. Turned out ok though and we had a pretty good laugh. But that certainly wasn’t the end of our morning/afternoon antics. Definitely more to come.
　
So as we are gearing up to head downtown, with maybe a half an hour or so between us and a couple hundred of our hungry friends, well, that’s when we first noticed the nasty, ominous looking clouds that were hanging over our neighborhood and off to the east. Which is precisely the direction we are heading to hang out and have lunch with our friends. We check weather.com, which proved to be fairly worthless in hindsight. 20% chance of rain between noon and 2:00 p.m. Only problem is weather.com doesn’t run the universe. Those great folks there, in all their weather wisdom, really have no clue what is going to happen at any given time. We all know that. Yet we type that web address in, do our little search for our city and take what they say as gospel. Bad idea today. So we get downtown and get all set up, pray and start serving. Within minutes, God’s real sense of humor becomes very apparent. We’d probably been serving for about 10 minutes when it began. Now remember, this is us, me and Robin who are always bragging on God and how he never lets the rain happen between noon and 2 on Sundays. We’ve had one other Sunday recently where we had a bit of a nuisance rain. Nothing earth shattering, but just enough to let us know that He’s there. We’ve always been amazed at how we’ve been able to dodge the bullet for so long. Or in this case, dodge the raindrops. And in today’s case, the BIG raindrops. So I was standing there talking to my buddy Billy and it began. First you could see the spots on the sidewalk. And you’d feel a drop or two every few seconds. And then? Well then the deluge began. We’re scrambling to get things back in the trailer. I’m standing in water up to my ankles next to the curb. It’s just one of those surreal sort of feelings. We knew everything would dry out, but man what a mess. And oh, hey weather.com? Thanks. You guys are real good at what you do. :) We just had to laugh.
　
And more importantly, what were we going to do about all the food we’d brought down. We had enough food to feed probably 250 people. And people were scattering all over the place. It would have been real easy at that point to simply load up and head west. But then His sense of humor went to another level. We were standing there in the pouring rain and it was raining hard. Hard enough, in fact, off the bill of my hat alone to fill a small stream. Crazy rain. I joked that we should have started handing out soap and shampoo right then and there to maybe help some of our friends. It was a joke. Sort of. And then the sun made an appearance. During the rainstorm. And slowly, the rain began to let up. You could see our friends, who had taken shelter in doorways of downtown buildings all around the block, begin to make their way back to our corner. His corner. Robin had already come to the back of the trailer asking for a couple of tables and some of the buckets that contained the serving utensils. We were back in business and fortunately our friends were still hanging out. In fact, several of them commented about us still being there. They couldn’t believe we didn’t leave when the heavens opened up. Where were we going to go? I believe God was just letting us know that He’s still in charge. We’d bragged for a long time about how it never rains down there. And guess Who got the last laugh. But we hung in there and He took care of us. And it turned out to be a beautiful day. Soggy and crazy and all that stuff, but after the rains let up He blessed us with an absolutely gorgeous afternoon. We were able to pass out bucketfuls of socks, clothing, sheets, towels, kid’s toys and stuffed animals, bags and bags of Panera bread, enough ‘meals to go’ to choke a herd of horses and lots of God’s unbelievable love. Not because of anything we did. But all because of His tremendous blessings and love. What a day! What a sopping, soggy day. But what a day! I’m pretty sure He was looking down today, chuckling at what must have looked like an overturned ant hill. But then He made it right. And it was indeed good. As it always is.
　
I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy. Psalm 140:12
　
Peace, have a great and blessed week and make a difference.
　
…it matters to that one… :)