A dead car, a grassy slope and fleas

My car died again on Friday. It is becoming a sadly regular thing. I was driving the kids to Old North Church for VBS and it died right outside the Eddy's house. That's right - Bob & Chuck Eddy, the car people. How's that for irony. So we got out and walked the rest of the way. There was much complaining and gnashing of teeth. The kids weren't happy either. Of course I turned into my parents and told them how I walked to school every day - 3 miles each way (true) uphill . . .both ways (not true, obviously).

Then I had to sit on a grassy slope and wait for AAA to send a tow truck. Lots of people stopped to offer help - cold drinks, company etc. All of the men asked me if I had run out of gas!! So I'm sitting there and I thought well I could be thoroughly grumpy about this or . . . . well I remembered an illustration that Dave used way back when our fledgeling church was meeting at Pine Lake. It was a Corrie Ten Boom story of how they were allowed to pray in the prison camp they were in. Not everyone, just their cabin. They eventually found out that the guards left them alone because there were so many fleas in their cabin. So Dave's thought was that the things we sometimes assume are our 'fleas' are actually something we need to thank God for. Well I realized as I sat there that if I had not been forced to sit there for an hour I would have continued to rush around as I had the whole week. Yet here I was enjoying some lovely scenery and making a list of the ways God is blessing me. It's a long list.