KEEPING ONES MOUTH SHUT

Thursday, November 08, 2007

“Listen Babe, this is not Disneyland.” I made this remark to my sweet wife one sunny day in Jerusalem. She understood immediately what I was talking about. For years we lived “just down the road” from Disneyland and so we went there often. One year when relatives came to visit and to “treat” our teen helpers for Vacation Bible School, we went three or four times. WE ALMOST ALWAYS RAN INTO SOMEBODY WE KNEW.

Los Angeles is a big place, Disneyland is big—and it’s not in the heartland of America. You would think that you could go there many times over many years and never see anybody but strangers. Well, not us—we almost always saw somebody we knew.

So, walking in the Garden of Gethsemane, Charlotte asked, “Do you think we will see anybody we know?” Smart me, I blurted out, “Listen Babe, this is not Disneyland.” We walked a few more feet and came face to face with a man we had known when we were teenagers living in Oklahoma. We hadn’t seen him in years. We lived hundreds of miles apart. We were thousands of miles from home, and wouldn’t you know it—there stood Virgil Trout!

I almost said a word that should never be said in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Holy City of Jerusalem—or anyplace else for that matter. What did Charlotte say? I don’t remember. But she is still smiling and that was 29 years ago!