Thursday, August 25, 2022
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Buffalo on the shores of Lake Erie
Stay awake! For you do not know when the Son of Man will come.
Andi and Jasper had dinner with us last night. I took Aki and Miles to the Austin airport a few hours earlier, heading to Buffalo to visit and help Aki’s parents get a little more ready to move to Austin. Soon we’ll all be here together!
But now, the Tomitas are apart. “We usually travel together,” Andi said worriedly. We watched their flight on my phone using FlightAware. We watched the flight on our computer using FlightRadar24. We watched the plane fly over Huntsville, Alabama. It landed in Charlotte and sat there awhile till the second plane headed north to New York. I watched that plane head over Lake Erie and land in Buffalo.
On the way to the airport Miles was totally psyched. His excitement flew all around the car. At the airport, Aki told us, they walked from one end of the airport and back after the TSA checked their baggage and their bodies. Miles pulled out the handle on his Paw Patrol carryon and pulled it all the way.
They traveled light. When I dropped them off we were behind a big SUV, and the driver promptly unloaded eight large suitcases and burdened four travelers. Why? Not our problem. I remembered carrying big suitcases to Italy on our 25th anniversary. Suitcases developed to ruin your back and knees. Why? Not the next time. Never again.
Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household to distribute to them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so.
Of course it was a long day for our intrepid travelers. School for Miles, work for Dad, then two flights with layovers, arriving in Buffalo at midnight. Long day for Aki’s valiant parents too, picking them up after midnight. But I’m pretty sure everyone slept well last night. And sometime in the next few days they will be oohing and aahing at Niagara Falls, even taking a ride (I heard) on the Maid of the Mist. Getting us closer to the Falls since 1846, and not stopping now.
Ken and Machiko, Aki’s parents, hosted us for a week in 2008, before Andi and Aki were married. We spent an afternoon at a downtown art fair and walked beside Lake Erie at sunset. They took us to Finger Lakes wine country, to Toronto, and to Niagara Falls. And one day we visited the Chautauqua grounds in Chautauqua, New York. I felt awed to sit in an old open air auditorium, in one of several thousand seats, breeze blowing by my face, imagining. Imagining. Listening to a speech for the ages. By William Jennings Bryan. Billy Sunday. Susan B. Anthony. Booker T. Washington. Mark Twain.
Teddy Roosevelt called Chautauqua (an Erie tribe name for a nearby lake) “the most American thing in America.” The Chautauqua came to Lincoln, Illinois before I was born. More like TED talks than revival sermons, speeches on important topics filled the air of a 4500 person auditorium at our biggest park for several days in a row. Situated on the site of a Kickapoo Indian village, the largest Chautauqua in Illinois thrived on hot Lincoln summer days from 1902 until 1937.
Miles and Aki will have a different time with Ken and Machiko, but it will be good. In 2008 our time together was wonderful and cemented our relationship as parents. And now here we all are sixteen years later, three generations gradually settling down together in Austin.
I will praise your name for ever, Lord. Generation after generation praises your works and proclaims your might. They publish the fame of your abundant goodness.
(1 Corinthians 1, Psalm 145, Matthew 24)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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