It began as a great day. The sun coming up. Enjoying some coffee and my family on the road to Kampala to take our cats in for vaccinations and meet one of the daughters in our family group for lunch. Traffic flowed well.
When we looked for the place where we would meet we got onto a road rarely traveled by larger cars but everything was fine. Kim said we were lost but I still had a general idea where we were and sure enough drove out right where we were supposed to be. Hmm, pride?! Still a good day. We found our Ebenezer family (the family group we are associated with) daughter and joyfully headed to the restaurant.
As we got out of the car, I didn't like where we were parking but there were no closer parking spots in the shade. We were leaving our kittens in the car with water, a litter box, food, shade and windows just down an inch. Taboo in the States. Tough to avoid when we drive for 2 hours to town where we do all our major business.
As I was locking the car, I looked in the car one last time and a small prompt went through my mind: "two bags are in plain sight". My response? "It's okay, there is a security guard here." Of course when I passed him, he was sitting down facing away from the cars, two vans that were right next to him and our car not 30 ft. away.
After a nice time of talking and eating with our Ebenezer family daughter, I went out to the car just to check on the cats. The car was unlocked and the lock had been jammed in but the door was shut. The two bags were missing but the two cats were there.
We agonized over that and tried taking some action but it all fell flat. We took our Ebenezer daughter home after trying to replace some of her lost items, and we grieved with her. One of the stolen bags was hers.
I dropped the family off at a shopping center and got on a boda-boda (a motorcycle taxi) to cross town and drop off an item. I was wondering how safe this guy would drive but he seemed to be doing okay. In a tight spot, however, a guy with two 35kg bags on the back of his motorcycle cut us off and the bag caught our mirror flipping the handlebars to the side. We skidded across the pavement toward the curb while I watched it approaching quickly. Some heated words of Luganda ensued peppered with many "sorry, sorry, sorry"'s from both boda drivers and many other witnesses around.
With a whole in my pant leg and the skin worn off my arm, we continued on getting lost on the way. I finally reached my destination and Judith, the lady to whom I was bringing the item, helped scrub my arm to get at least some of the dirt and gravel out.
When I got back to pick up my family and we all were headed out of town in our car, I said to Kim, "How can a person find joy in a day like this?" The response came, not from Kim, but I believe the Spirit of God, "Why can't you find joy in a day like this? Only two bad things happened to you all day. You had a wonderful time with your family including your Ebenezer family daughter, the cats didn't get stolen or escape, you didn't die, your car worked and wasn't stolen. You ate good food. You had a safe trip in the car. You had a good talk with your wife. Why can't you find joy in a day like this?"
I really and genuinely praised God after that.
No comments:
Post a Comment