A Thief in the Night, Panama City Style

OK, I had a weird experience today. Everything has gone seriously back to normal since we returned from the Land of Enchantment, Disney style. It has rained a lot these past few days. In fact, today it pretty much rained all day and there was a tornado warning. Fun. Well, normally on Thursdays I go to church in the morning, teach a voice lesson at noon, and then go home for an hour to start my weekly laundry and other household chores that never get done until Thursday before I go pick up Emma at school. On Thursdays, we spend some time together in the afternoons and I have started to teach her piano lessons. She is doing fine, she just wants to be perfect at it without any practice. We are working on that one.

Anyway, so my story goes a little something like this: When I left home to pick Emma up at school (we live less than 2 miles from the school), I heard a tornado warning on the radio, but it was several miles away from us and moving even further away. So, no worries on my end. I get to the school and there is not very much movement. I park, get out of my car, and weave through the other cars that are parked in the pick-up line. It is raining, but not pouring by any means. I begin to notice that there are no people in any of these parked cars. The blinds are all drawn on the classroom windows. [For those of you not familiar with schools in northwest Florida, they remind me of drive-up motels. You can go directly to each classroom from outside. I think it is a little weird and I wonder about how they can really lock down the entire school safely in case crazy ensues.] And, though I have not worried about this in some time, my first thought was: "Dear God, I have missed the rapture!" I could hear that old-fashioned alarm clock going off by the side of the bed in the cult classic "A Thief in the Night." Scary. I mean that Christian dude had the worst teeth I have ever seen. ; ) I knocked on the door and eventually my wife came to the door (she teaches in the classroom next to Emma's) and let me in. The students were under lock down due to the weather. I took my little one, who will be 8 years old on Saturday, and we "braved" the weather and went home.

It is amazing to me how, no matter how old I get, or however my theology evolves, the things we learn from our youngest days tend to stick with us, or at least come back to us in times of crisis (whether real or perceived). I guess this can be both good and bad. I have no intention of debating the scriptural accuracy of dispensationalist eschatology in this blog, so I will leave it at that. Really, at this point in my life, I spend very little time [read: none at all] fearfully contemplating the end of the world. I think this is a diversion from more pressing issues, like the things Jesus talked about most--healing the sick, clothing the naked, making way for His Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven--those types of things.

I had an interesting exchange this week, or more precisely, near exchange over presidential politics and the upcoming election. I never talk about politics at church, especially since I am no longer the most conservative of the bunch. For the most part, I leave my thoughts out of any political conversation (and I did this time as well). I direct this senior ladies choir that sings at area nursing homes and retirement centers. At the end of each rehearsal we have a time for prayer concerns, and considering their age, this can be an extensive period. One of the younger members of the choir is not a Methodist. I am not sure where she attends church, but it is definitely a charismatic church of some sort. At the end of the prayer concerns, she gravely mentioned that we needed to pray for the upcoming election. Florida's primaries are coming up in January and "we need to pray that the right man is elected." Which, of course, was seconded by "or the right woman." This led to a slight altercation about whether or not our current president was, in fact, the right person. Anyway, I prayed that God's will would be done in us and in our country.

But I got to thinking again: Does God care who is the president of the US of A? I remember spending hours complaining about the moral woes of the Clinton administration back in the 1990s. And, though I keep it mostly to myself, I have just as many (or more) complaints about the current, "Christian" administration. I will vote for the right person, who may or may not be a man. In the end, I think that God mostly cares that we do the things that He expects of us personally. I am not convinced that the idea of a "Christian nation" is all that good of a thing (or ever was a reality in our history for that matter). I guess I can hope that the Rapture will come and we won't have to worry about it. But I have this sneaking suspicion that we will make it through the next election cycle.

Cue music: "Life was filled with guns and war . . . " Fade to white . . .