Behold, God is doing a new old thing!

I am retired.

I am retired and the sense of being un fettered means I want to be out in the world.

Cooper and I have a new camper. We are rookies at the craft of camping. We have so much to learn and time in which to learn it.

This past week we celebrated our longest occupation of the camper. We were out and about and having made a detour to attend a funeral of a beloved, we were on our way to our second destination – Bayfield, Wisconsin.

Motoring along on highway 53 there was a bump followed quickly by the realization that something was very wrong. We pulled over to the side of the road and discovered an incomprehensible thing. It wasn’t a flat or a fractured axle. The cause of the problem was that the bolt coupling the hitch to our car was gone.

Gone.

The camper had slid on the power jack and was unhurt and the chains held but the camper was now down off the hitch and to the rhythm of cars whizzing past at 65 miles an hour was added our sense of NOW WHAT?

A man pulled up in a not-new car. He engaged Cooper in conversation. I watched Cooper’s body language to ascertain the gist of the interchange.

The man got out of the car and promptly got to work. He jacked up the camper. He assured us that this devastation was not a big deal. He called a friend who lived nearby who happened to have the right-sized bolt and pin to secure the camper in its rightful place. He went and got that pin and bolt and laid on his back to install it while cars whizzed by.

As we were thanking him we exchanged information and it turns out we are all ministers: Cooper and me in the UMC and the gentleman as a Jehovah’s Witness. He shared a pamphlet with us and offered to talk more with us about his faith.

As we pulled away the power of the goodness of the Samaritan who saw the plight of two pastors in the ditch was not lost on us.

He saw. He stopped. He helped to gentle our jangled nerves and he knew what to do to help us and he did it.

He showed us mercy, did our neighbor.

We seek to go and do likewise.