Laugh With Me

All right, so with the recent state of affairs this blog has seemed semi-melancholy. Not today. Today was very joyful and encouraging as we had our first small groups of the year with the 6th-8th graders. To get to know one another we shared our "faith stories" and three of the girls shared that they had not known Jesus until this past year when they started attending our youth program. What an affirmation of God using the humble attempts of a struggling group of believers to reach out and communicate his truth and love to lost and hurting kids!

Then one girl told me a story that I had to laugh at, and I thought I would share it with you. This is how she told it to me....

"Kristi, you remember that time you were talking at youth group about prayer and you said 'Wouldn't it be cool if we had a 1-800 number to talk to God?'" [I don't remember, but it sounds like something I would say.] "And then you told us that we didn't even need to pick up a phone, but we could just talk to God anytime and he would be listening. Well, a few days ago I was thinking about that and I really wanted to talk to God, and then I started thinking, 'What if I really could call God and talk to him. So I picked up the phone and dialed 1-800-TALK2GOD..."

[At this I pointed out to her that there were 8 digits in that number and she said, "Well, it rang!" leading me to assume that the first 7 digits were actually dialed and the last one was just a superfluous number pressed right before the ring.]

"Anyway, the phone rang and it didn't even go to an answering machine or anything. Just this lady answered the phone and said 'Something-something-something-something Law Offices,' or something like that. And I was kind of confused and I said 'Jeesuus?' and she was quiet for a second and then she said, 'Ummm...I'm sorry, Josephine doesn't work here anymore.' So then I felt dumb and I was really embarrased so I just said, 'Okay, thank you,' and hung up really quick."

By now the other girls and I were cracking up and I said to her, "You missed the whole point of what I was saying. I was saying that we don't need a phone to talk to God--we can talk to him whenever and wherever!"

"I know," she admitted, "but for some reason when I was thinking about it I just got all excited and then I really, really felt in my heart that it was going to work."

The moral of the story? Just because it feels like it should work doesn't mean it will, whatever your "it" may be, I'd recommend making sure "it" is grounded in truth. :-)