My last full day with Sue.  Forty two years ago she stood by myside as Dave and I spoke our vows.  Forty two years of life lived by each of us.  So many roads travelled.  So many experiences experienced.  As stories unfold I comprehend that I could use just the story of one life to write a mini-series or several volumes of books.  And as I speak and share with others I realize that I too have accumulated a lifetime of stories.  The stories of this trip are also accumulating.  I am beginning to see some of the lessons that God has prepared for me to learn.  Day after day the building blocks of my trip are beginning to take shape. They come in the form of each experience, each person I meet, the roads I travel, the words I speak, the words others speak to me, and even in the beds I sleep in.

I have slept on soft beds, hard beds, couches, air mattresses, on fold out beds, in low beds and in high beds needing stairs to climb into them, in living rooms, in kitchens, in twin beds, in a toddler bed and in beds fit for a king.  I have slept on new sheets and worn sheets and smooth sheets and rough sheets, clean sheets and sheets that had been previously used.  I haven’t slept on the floor… YET…  One thing I have discovered, no matter which bed I was in I slept like a baby.  And for that I thank God.  It has been amazing.  As I think back over these places of rest the stories surrounding the beds surface in my memory.  So many that haven’t been told and may never be told, tucked into that special place of my heart to be savored only by me.  Friends and faces and surroundings and incidents all come flooding back into my memory. I will take them home with me.

Every day I am learning; about the world, about others, about God, about myself.  Today was a God learning day.  My friend Sue wanted to go someplace different today for church.  She gave me the scenarios of what she knew about different churches in the area but didn’t know which one to choose.  I felt impressed that we should go to Calvary Chapel in Modesto.  So we did.  EXCELLENT CHOICE!  After looking back over the day I believe it was a God inspired choice.  The praise and worship service was amazing and the teaching was illuminating.  Senior Pastor, Damian Kyle, used the scripture reference Isaiah 66:1-6 as his topic.  I deduced that this was the last day of the series of sermons on Isaiah.  The last teaching of the Isaiah series was tonight at the 6:00 p.m. service.  Sue and I planned to attend but our day zoomed by too quickly and we couldn’t make it back.  I do hope I can listen to the entire series on Isaiah online as I do my workouts.  The only problem with that is that I can’t take notes and get into the deep study of the series while exercising.  Reverend Kyle’s presentation just opened up the scriptures with understanding and comprehension that I had not understood previously.  To discover  Damian Kyle’s teaching is like a gift presented to last a long, long time.  I thank God for my ears that I can hear so I can learn more and more about who God really is.  And I thank God for a teachable spirit.  If you don’t have one just ask God for one and I’m certain there are a lot of things He’d like to teach you.

Not only was the teaching excellent but from the time we stepped out of the car onto the parking lot we could feel the friendliness of the people around us, from the grounds attendants, to the greeters at the door, to the people in the restrooms, concluding with those sitting around us.  I have never felt so genuinely welcomed at a church service as I did at Calvary Chapel, Modesto.  I was also very impressed with all the volunteers, each doing separate jobs preparing the building for the next congregating of “THE CHURCH”.

So much packed into the session this morning that I can’t go into it all here.  I would recommend going to the website www.ccmodesto.com and do some exploring.  Believe me, I already did and am excited to see listed all the topics I will be able to listen to.

It was so refreshing to be so welcomed into “The Family of God” in a “foreign” land.  Thank you Robyn and John and Jenny and husband and Mrs. B.  You helped make this Sunday Sabbath special!  God bless all of you!

Sue and I have had a wonderful time remembering the good and the bad times, filling in the blank episodes of our lives that we hadn’t shared before and just loving being in each other’s presence again.  I do hope all of you have this kind of friend to remember with in your later years.  Sometimes the remembering is easier than it was going through it.  And life has a different perspective when looking back, a little older, a little wiser. The best part…we can look back and know we survived.  I can look back and see all the times when God was right there beside me as I trudged through the cement of life.  So much more to tell.

Yesterday I said I would write part of an essay I wrote about 47 or 48 years ago.  If the typing goes fast I’ll write the entire essay I wrote as a teenager:

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THE FUTURE IS TOMORROW

In the beginning God…In the beginning God created…And our beginning was created by God.   And we were created for a purpose.

Where were you in 1872?  Where will you be tomorrow?  Tomorrow is our future.  What we, you and I, do with it is completely up to us.  Tomorrow is our future.  Yesterday is gone.  Soon tomorrow will be gone.  What will we, as Christians, do with our lives?  Is the future really ours?  How can we as individuals be certain we will have a future?

Life is now lived at an exceedingly fast pace.  Violence and death are nothing unexpected.  Individuals are abused and slaughtered; whole nations can be wiped out by one bomb.  What is life anyway and how can we be so sure we will be here tomorrow?  Too often “tomorrow”, “next week”, and “nest month: are taken for granted.  “I’ll do it tomorrow.”  The familiar phrase that has certainly been spoken by many of us at one time or another.  As one character in the popular play, THE MUSIC MAN, said, “Pile up a bunch of tomorrows and you’ll find you’ll end up with a lot of empty yesterdays.”  These words are so very true.  What is a future if we don’t use it now?  Empty??  The future is ours because of what we do with it now.  We must live to the fullest of God’s plan for us as individuals.  Not by saying, “I will do”, or “I did”, but by doing His (God’s) will and works for our lives now.  The future is ours because through a day by day walk with God we can claim each day not for ourselves but for God; awakening with the thought, what can I do for my neighbor, my friends, my pastor, my country…for GOD?

What we do today will reflect what happens tomorrow and the many more to come.  God has not definitely said, “I promise you a tomorrow,” but when this physical life is ended our tomorrow with Christ will begin…for eternity.  The future is ours only because we live in the complete will of God today.

And that is what I wrote all those years ago.   This was the entire essay.

Good night.  It is 11:23 p.m. and I am going to eat dinner and go to bed.  My dinner will be goat cheese, peanut butters and an orange.  I don’t like eating quite this late but my lunch was at 2:00 p.m..