The Antique That Got Away

Here is the first of the newly written summer devotionals...I'll only fall back on my creative writing ones when nothing happens.

The Antique That Got Away

A few days I ago I had the pleasure of attending the Coarsegold antique fair with my father. We both enjoy junk, especially old junk, and antique fairs usually have junk in profusion.

The Coarsegold antique fair certainly had junk. Much of it was very expensive, which is the only reason we did not return with a truck full of excellent top quality junk.

We found a mounted boar head. I kid you not, we found a mounted boar head. Ladies, I’ll let you in on a secret. Every man has the secret urge of owning a mounted boar head. However, I suspect women do not share this desire. I do not understand why. What you do is take the boar head, and mount it in a special room of the house called a “den.” Then put on a flannel shirt, read a newspaper, smoke a pipe, and pet the dog while sitting in an easy chair under the boar head. This is probably the closest to heaven that we can experience here on earth (except Adventist men should omit the pipe smoking part and replace it with eating prosages or ice-cream or both.)

Sadly, the boar head was out of our price range, and I think mother would have disapproved anyway, so we left it. We continued our trek around the fair, and spent about an hour looking at old postcards and older antique dealers.

Finally, we came across a booth run by two old ladies who were having a very hard time. They had boxes and boxes of junk which they hadn’t even unloaded yet, and it was already noon. Apparently they only put one item out every half hour. Worse yet, they had no idea what anything was worth, and if they did, they priced it based on the dollar values of 1955.

My dad purchased a $300 pocket knife from them for $5, and they actually were afraid they’d priced it too high. I wasn’t that lucky, but I did watch as they put out one item that I decided I had to own.

It was a “Shazam” Captain Marvel drinking glass. If you don’t know who Captain Marvel is, don’t be surprised. He was basically a Superman rip-off from the 1940’s, who for a time actually surpassed big blue in popularity. He was a ten-year-old boy, that upon saying the magic word “Shazam” would transform into a muscle bound hero. When you’re ten years old, that is really cool. I’m twenty and I still think it’s really cool.

As for the glass, I’m the kind of person who occasionally gets the odd urge to buy things for his unborn children. If I ever have a son someday, I’ve already got a few Christmas or Birthday or Tuesday presents stored up for him. Not so much for daughters, I’m letting my unknown\unmet wife worry about that.

I had to buy that glass, but my dad was looking through some interesting agricultural pamphlets from 1922 about sheep-killing dogs and udder diseases, and I decided to wait for him to get done before I went over to ask how much the poor old lady wanted for it.

I had stood there for about three minutes, thinking about how cool it would be to see my kids drinking from that cup, when tragedy struck. Some woman walked up, picked up the Shazam glass, and bought it for $1.

How dare she!? The old bat stole my Shazam cup! It only was a dollar? Ebay says it’s worth at least $15! Curse my inaction and procrastination!

That’s the way life works, though. The opportunity to buy that cup presented itself, but I told myself it would still be there in five minutes. However, the door of probation slammed in my face and my cup got away. I can live without it, though. Inaction and procrastination can cost a man far worse things.

The attitude that we can wait to put our lives right with God until we’re old-or until next week-is a very dangerous one. There may not be a next week for you, and good intentions achieve nothing. Action is required. A person is defined by what they do. Don’t put off trying to break a bad habit, or trying to witness to a friend, because just as easily as that cup walked away from me the opportunity to change yourself or help others can vanish too.

Don’t wait! Act today.

Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Matthew 22:44

Epilogue: The trip to the antique fair wasn’t a complete washout. I bought a Beverly Hillbillies comic book that features the Clampetts fighting a crazed robot. It rocks all kinds of awesome.

I Feel A Little Silly

My car in its natural desert habitat.

This story is mostly me being stupid.

I Feel A Little Silly

Yesterday I got into my car with the intention of driving back to the University. I started it, shifted into reverse, and examined my surroundings in order to be sure that I wouldn’t run into any innocent pedestrians.

Then my phone rang.

Being the conscientious driver that I am, I killed the engine before answering it. My mother needed to know something or other, so I told her and then hung up.

Then I attempted to re-start my car. I discovered that the engine was entirely unresponsive. I turned the key, fed it some gas, and still the engine refused to even turn over.

After about two or three minutes of this, I got out and looked under the hood. Everything seemed to be fine there, so I got back in the car and tried to solve this conundrum.

I could not determine why the engine refused to cooperate. Had I somehow created an electrical problem? Was juice not flowing from the battery? I could turn on my headlights, so that didn’t seem to be the problem.

The car had worked just fine when I originally started it, what could I have possibly done to it by starting and stopping it like that?

Befuddled, I finally decided to give my dad a call. He was 2500 miles away, but he’s a mechanical expert. Being able to fix broken machinery is an extremely important part of farming, because farm equipment tends to be very old and overused He’s taught me a lot, but I will never reach the level of mastery he has attained through decades of practice.

He answered the phone and I heard a skill saw turn off. I began to explain to him my situation, when I discovered that I had neglected to shift the transmission back into park. In my hurry to answer my cell phone I had left out this all important step of call stopping.

I shifted from reverse back into park and the car fired right up.

I did all this while in mid-sentence with my father talking about my silly car, and had only been on the line with him about twenty seconds.

I told him to forget I’d called, and that the car was working perfectly now and that he could go back to sawing whatever it was he was sawing. I conveniently left out the details about why the car wouldn’t start and how I fixed it. I felt a little silly.

My dad then informed me that he had magically fixed it from afar over the phone lines. If you have ever wondered why I am the way I am you need only meet my father.

Sometimes when we face troubles in our lives, we may overlook an obvious solution. The thought never crossed my mind to be sure I was in park, because I didn’t believe myself to be capable of such a scatter-brained feat of stupidity.

Yet, that was the only solution that would have gotten my car started. Trials in life are inevitable, and problems with no immediately obvious solution will certainly arise. But, there is one obvious solution for which we should also start with: Asking God to help.

This poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. Psalm 34:6 NKJV

A Goat Tale

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Me, circa 1996, and a goat with gravity defying ears.

I suppose the opening piece should be the one that has garnered me the most success. This story won 2nd place for prose in last year's "Legacy."

A Goat Tale

I grew up on a farm. One thing many farms have is animals. Our farm was no different. We had goats, lots of them. I was a typical annoying child, and occasionally gave in to the urge to tease them.

Female goats are known as “nannies” and are not fun to tease, because they don’t fight back, they just run away. Chasing them is a little fun, but they run too fast for an average boy to catch. Not unlike human females.

Male goats are known as “billies” and are very fun to tease, because they fight back. Now, when you’re ten years old, you can’t harass just any billy goat, because the full grown ones are too irritable, strong, and soaked in their own body fluids. Not unlike human males.

No, you want to find one that is about half-grown, one going through puberty, so to speak. At this age, the average billy is territorial, aggressive, and willing to fight back, but too weak and stupid to do much of anything. Not unlike human adolescents.

This story is about one such billy goat that I discovered one day when I should have been doing something productive. He was in a pen all by himself, he was about half grown, and he had a look of utter and total hatred on his face. He looked a lot like Satan, actually. Overall, he looked like fun.

I climbed into the pen and spent about an hour annoying him. He wanted me out, but all he could do was butt me with his little horns, which didn’t hurt at all. I remember grabbing him by the horns, spinning him around in a circle, and running away, watching him dizzily hobble after me. This was more fun than Disneyland. However, I eventually lost interest and left the poor goat alone.

I did not encounter him again for some time, until about six months later when I was out stacking firewood. He went walking right by me, out of his pen and apparently having the time of his life. This wasn’t the way things worked on the farm. Billy goats were supposed to be in pens, not wandering around. I resolved to remedy this issue immediately.

I constructed a “goat war station.” It consisted of an empty trailer, and various weapons with which I could attack the goat from a safe vantage point. The weapons consisted mostly of water jugs and string. The plan was to lure the goat within range, douse him a few times, then rope him and lead him back to his pen.

The only problem was that the goat had no desire to pursue me. In fact, all he did was run away when I got close. I’ve already explained that chasing goats isn’t much fun, but I did anyways. I chased him until he jumped into a pen filled with young nanny goats.

This was a pen, but this was not the pen he was supposed to be in. The matter was becoming more complicated by the minute, but I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I realized the only way I was going to get him out would be to make him angry enough to chase me.

Unfortunately, this task proved difficult. No matter what I did, the goat ignored me. He was far more interested in the young nanny goats. Eventually, I found that shooting him with a high powered watering hose did just the trick.

Now I had one very upset goat on my hands. I also quickly found out that the goat had grown quite a bit more in the past six months than I had. The tables turned rather abruptly.

The goat charged at me with far more speed than I would have appreciated, leaving me only one option. I grabbed his horns, and thus began a very long grappling match.

He pushed me into the corner of the pen, but I kept a firm grip on him. Soon, we both had discovered that neither of us was strong enough to overpower the other. He couldn’t ram me while I held his horns, but I couldn’t escape the pen while doing so. We were at a stalemate. Contrary to what you learned in history class, this is how the Cold War actually began.

An hour had passed. I observed my mother in the distance. Should I yell for help? No, I was ten years old now, man enough to handle a goat without mommy bailing me out.

Two hours had passed. I observed some workers in the distance. Should I yell for help? No, I had gotten myself into this mess and I was going to get myself out of it. It was a hot day, and both I and the goat smelled repugnant, and we were both tired, but neither was ready to concede.

Three hours had passed. My five-year-old brother approached and wanted to know what I was doing. At this point I was really tired of goats, and wanted out badly. The goat was becoming more upset and was struggling harder, as well.

I was about to tell my brother to go away, when a solution came to my mind. My brother could come into the pen, take the goat by the horns, and then I could escape. I could then pull him over the top of the pen, we would both be home free, and we would never speak of the incident again. It all made so much sense at the time.

My brother agreed, got into the pen, and took the horns. I quickly climbed over the fence, and turned around just in time to see my brother being smashed into a fence post, followed by a very unpleasant cracking sound. The goat then trotted away, apparently content with his revenge.

I was sure that my brother was broken, but he managed to climb out of the pen, and thankfully was not seriously injured. I, however, had suffered a rather fatal injury to my pride.

My stupidity in approaching that goat is a lot like the way we fall into temptation. Because I had played with it when it was smaller, I didn’t recognize it when it was larger and actually dangerous.

Satan doesn’t throw large temptations in front of us right away. He’s too smart for that. He knows that by giving into small temptations, we take baby steps towards life shattering ones. He knows that jealously leads to theft, lust leads to adultery, and hatred leads to murder, and he has used this technique to bring many strong men and women down.

And when we are trapped by sin, it is our natural reaction to believe that we can save ourselves from it. I spent several hours in a pen with an angry goat because I didn’t want to ask for help. The fact of the matter was, I was unable to get out on my own and no amount of determination could change that. And just as somebody else took the punishment for my stupidity, Christ has taken the punishment for our sins. We need to rely on His power, not on our own.