It might actually be an unwritten rule of flying commercially. The person who has the window seat in a row always seems to get there last. It's just got to be a rule; seems to always happen. It happened one day to me. I was lucky enough to be in the center seat. There was someone to my left sitting on the aisle seat, and we were all buckled in because they were about to close the door and begin the flight. I said, "All right! I'm going to get an empty seat next to me." No!
My wife, my son and I were walking across a parking lot talking. All of a sudden the people who were walking in front of us whirled around and the lady said, "I know that voice!" Well, I'm always afraid when somebody says that to me; I wonder if it's like somebody I like, you know, I owe money to. But this does happen every once in a while, and sometimes it's someone I do owe money to, but more often than not it's someone who somehow has come into contact with this particular voice over the radio, and usually on a lot of occasions.
So an angry girl named Sandy came storming up the Eastern Seaboard - the largest Atlantic hurricane ever up to that point. It was sort of like a Halloween snowstorm that happened the previous year that dumped a crazy two feet of snow onto Connecticut, where I just happened to be. And Sandy, then, did what "Snowy" had done the year before; made a whole lot of folks change their plans.
Two and a half feet of snow had just left a million people without power, and we were there! Wouldn't you know, I had picked my time to be up there in New England when that happened. Well, we checked into the motel before the storm, but now as I stood at the front desk, that phone was ringing incessantly. I kind of felt bad, because the lady gave the same answer every time, "Sorry, no room." Hey, those are tough words to hear.
There are lots of people digging into their family tree these days. In fact, we've done some of our own. A lot of digging around to find out where your roots are. You know, where my grandfather came from and my great grandfather, and which king or famous person I'm descended from. Of course I would be descended from someone famous, right?
There's nothing quite so precious as a little child screaming on an airplane. You're a captive group; what are you going to do? A couple of people might have a suggestion for what to do with the child, but you're stuck. It happened to me on a plane not long ago. Actually we hadn't taken off yet; I guess we could have left. But here's this little five-year-old and his mother's trying to get him to sit down.
Well, for several years in a row our town was pretty lucky. We had a winning football team every year in high school. And every year the parents had a dinner in the team's honor, and everybody came. I mean, even people who had nothing to do with the football season suddenly showed up: the politicians, the board members, a variety of seemingly unconnected dignitaries. Oh, I'm sure they were there to honor the players.
I approached our local McDonald's manager with an idea for using his restaurant one night. I asked him if he would let our Campus Life group have it for a candlelight dinner at McDonalds. He said, "Well, that sounds creative, but we can't close and just shut the public out. But we can allow you to come in."
Five thousand miles in one month! That's not too bad if you're in an airplane, but that's how far I drove one summer and still often do. (Although I should say my wife does a lot of the driving these days.) But back then I just about ran the wheels off of our van driving from one conference, or speaking assignment, or college trip to another. Let's see, if I averaged 50 mph, that means I drove for 100 hours. Oh, man!
Well, it was a great time, it really was. You know why? My wife was with me. We finally got to be together for extended blocks of time with no phone, no errands to do, no people to take us away. We didn't talk all the time, although we had a lot to catch up on. We probably could have been catching up for about 100 hours. Right?
Sometimes we just played music, or occasionally we would just spontaneously pray about something together. Or a lot of times we just enjoyed the silence or some of the beautiful scenery. And then every once in a while you'd hear the silence punctuated with an occasional comment or just an "I love you." I think my wife spoke for both of us when she described what was so nice about all those 5,000 miles. She said, "It was just so great being in your company; just the two of us."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Just the Two of Us."
You know, relationships need time together and especially times when there's like no agenda. It really enriched me to have that kind of time with my wife during all that driving. There's another relationship that might be a need, maybe desperate need of some "just being" time.
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Psalm 42, out of the heart of David, verses 1 and 2. "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God; for the living God." And then he asks this powerful question, "When can I go and meet with God?" That's the cry of a believer for the greatest emotional need he has - to be intimate with his Lord. When is the last time you just sat down with Jesus and enjoyed His company? Or do you only see Him when you have a list for Him?
Jeremy was over at our house with his parents, and he'd been downstairs playing. Suddenly he came into the living room and kind of sat down in his Dad's lap, and his Dad liked that. His Dad kind of wrapped his arms around him, started to cuddle him, and Jeremy didn't settle down; he just kept wiggling. He looked up at his Dad and he said, "Daddy, you know I'm not sitting here just because I want to be with you." Great! Yeah, he needed something.
Wow! How often is that me with my Heavenly Father, or you maybe? In fact we say, "Well, I'm not here just because I want to be with You; I've got my list. I need something." But you're growing up as a child of God when you want to be with God just to be with God. You say, "Ron, I don't really feel that way yet." Well, that's okay. Tell Him that. Ask Him for the desire for His company; this passion that David had just to be with Him. "When can I go and meet with God?"
We have the indescribable privilege to cuddle in the lap of the King of the Universe; to call Him "Daddy"; to let Him comfort our battered emotions; to speak new ideas and insights into our quiet heart. He can't do that while you're talking to Him. To be real, real close, you can't just run in and run through your "pleases" and "thank yous" and then run out. You can do all that, but then stay a little longer.
I think you and Jesus will feel the same way about it. It's like my wife said, "It was so great just being in your company, Lord, just the two of us."
I can still remember my wife's excited phone call that day. She said, "Honey! The baby just turned over!" Hey! He was three months old; it was a big deal. I mean, he's had a whole lot of birthdays since then, but I mean at that time it was a real milestone. It's hard to believe isn't it there was a time you couldn't turn yourself over? Can you imagine there was time you couldn't walk by yourself? You couldn't feed yourself? You're probably doing pretty well at those things now.
