So I left the house early yesterday morning because I wanted to vote, my van needed to be inspected, and I knew I would have scant office time for the next two weeks. It was unseasonably warm, of course, and so I felt the shut off valve in my sinuses open and both my eustachion tubes fill with fluid. I was so angry. “It is November, for heaven’s sakes, Why am I having to run my van’s air conditioner!” I thought. This feeling did not improve when I had to pay in excess of $37 to fill up my gas tank – with cheap, 87 octane gasoline. Just as I was about to get really wound up, the guys on the radio, covering the election, were talking about low turn-out in some Florida areas because of the clean-up that is still going on after this season’s four hurricanes. We didn’t have any hurricanes. We had some storms, two families in our congregation had their homes severely damaged by tornadoes, but I didn’t loose a single shingle. And it is really a beautiful day – an unseasonably beautiful day in November – a day when every golden leaf glows in the low November sun.

Thank you, God, for this beautiful day.

Then I went to vote, and couldn’t find a place to park. Actually I did have a place to park, and as I was parallel parking my van (which I am good at) some joker in a Mini Cooper pulls in and takes my spot. Then, I have to stand in a long line to vote. I’ve been voting since 1980, and I’ve never had to stand in line to vote. I thought, “Great! There goes an hour I won’t get back – an hour in the office I don’t have to spare.” Just as I was getting wound up, two ladies in the H through O line were saying, “Did you see the long lines in Afghanistan?” “Yes, and with gunfire going off all around!” I noticed no gunfire, and that the line was moving quickly, and that I was in the elementary school cafeteria where my daughters and nephews have safely eaten and played for more than 10 years. And it really is a wonderful country we’re living in. Things are more hectic, sometimes unbearably so, and terrorism has changed things – but not so much.

Thank you, God, for this free, prosperous, secure country we live in.

Then the lady in front of me turns around, and she is the mother of one of my eldest daughter’s friends. She lives right at the scene where we had our terrible automobile accident in 1997. We were struck by a policeman answering a call. She was the first one on the scene, and told me details about the accident, and the handling of it I didn’t know seven years ago. I was really steamed as she told me the way those who responded handled the accident scene, and the seeming priority the officer and his dog were given over my girls. “If he had hit us a few inches further, either way, he would have killed one of my girls!” I said, getting really wound up. “But he didn’t,” I remembered, “and they all walked away with only a few bumps and scratches.” It really was a miracle – in the Biblical sense. They were miracles when they were born, miracles when they survived. They are all three baptized – all saved, another miracle. It really is wonderful – to be loved and protected by God – to have his word and his presence the solid ground beneath us, and hope in Christ the anchor that holds us to that solid ground.

Thank you, God, for my children, for making us your children.

Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything giving thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. I Thessalonians 5.16-18