Gloves
At a conference in a rainy city, damp and cold but not freezing, I was carrying around with me, as one does, hat and scarf and gloves and umbrella. After the final event of the day, I realized I did not have my umbrella. I looked in my backpack: no gloves either. I found the umbrella in the book exhibit. The gloves were nowhere.
The next day, on a chance, I returned to the previous day’s lunchspot. I opened the door, and before I could say anything, she said, “Did you leave your gloves here yesterday?”
“You have made my day,” I said. She opened a cabinet and returned them to their grateful owner.
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What was most wonderful was not the finding of the gloves but being offered them before I had a chance even to ask.
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Which parable is this?
She lost a coin; she swept her room clean; she found the coin; she rejoiced.
He took his inheritance and ran; he came to the end of his wits; he practiced to himself the speech he would make to his father; before he could get the words out, his father embraced him.
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There is an overflowingness in God. His goodness races out towards us. He gives us what we want sometimes even before we can say a word.
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Out & About. This Sunday I will be preaching at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, 5100 Ross Ave., Dallas, at 8 and 10:30 a.m. At 9:30 a.m. I will begin a five-week class on the Song of Songs.
Saturday, Jan. 20, at 1 p.m. I begin a five-session course in Christian Ethics, offered at the Stanton Center at the cathedral. Each class is three hours, with one class per month through May. This course requires registration; info here.
The lunch place, by the way, was Garden Bar in Portland, Ore., and I had eaten the Garden Bar-B-Q salad. The research continues.