Phoneless in Frisco, part 1

So I had to go to San Francisco for three days this week and naturally I left my awesome new BlackBerry phone in the car. What good is a phone when I'm travelling? Mobile email is useless and so is being able to browse the web and look anything up from a taxi or a train. None of that is very helpful, unless you're a human with opposable thumbs. I was so angry. I realized what I had done in the security line, 20 minutes after my wife had left. My first thought: call her quick and ask her to come back, where's my phone? NO PHONE! Second, third, and fourth thought are not appropriate for young readers.

I would have taken great zeal in throwing a tantrum had I not been in an airport security line and potentially get sent to a strip search. I went through many thoughts, looking for someone to blame and revelling in how miserable my existence will be without an MP3 player or a way to communicate. I had planned on listening to several episodes of the Dennis Prager show. He's the conservative jewish dad I never had. I was sooo ready to settle down in a seat for a while and listen to him and let my mind wander.

BUT NO! I'm an idiot. I was going on and on in my head. Furious at the people around me and hating myself for inflicting such an egregious wrong on my own self. I didn't show any of this on the outside. You may have seen my mouth turn down or my eyes darken if you were looking at me, but no one was. There was no evidence of my anger, so I was fine, right?

Wrong. Part of a persons deeds are his thoughts. Believers are called to good deeds and self control and that includes what happens in the privacy of our minds. I got through security and realized that I was sinning, being so upset on the inside. I was really blowing it and I knew it. I think a few years ago I might have considered this episode a victory. I didn't actually start blaming other people to their faces and I didn't loose control outwardly or curse at all. Now I knew better, with special thanks to Bill Hoganson's self confrontation class, and I was ashamed of the tantrum God had observed. 

I looked for a store to buy an MP3 player at, but there was absolutely nothing to be found except for chips and car chargers! I got on the plane sat down in the first row and stared at the carpeted wall in front of me. Phew! What now? Again, thanks to Bill Hoganson's class, I had homework: memory verses. Thanks to my wife I had 10 verses printed out on a sheet of paper in my bag. I pulled the paper out and saw that I only knew half of them. So I got to work.

It was about 10 minutes of drilling myself on the verses before I realized what had happened. I almost started crying. God was jealous and didn't want me to spend the flight with Dennis Prager. God wanted me to be with Him. To think that God would allow me to casually forget my phone so that I would stop my plans for my life long enough to meditate on Him was embarrassing and wonderful. Why wasn't that my plan in the first place? Why hadn't it ever been my plan when I fly, even if I did it some of the time I'd not be such a villain.

My trip is over and I'm in the San Francisco airport waiting for my flight home. I've got no internet and no phone. There's no way for me to even tell someone that my flight has been delayed without costing me $5. I have plenty of reasons to be angry still, if I've go the wrong point of view. I've spent all my waking hours, when i was not working, learning new bible verses. Enjoying God for being such a jealous father that He had to arrange for us to have some alone time. He's better than good to me, and I don't give Him the devotion He deserves.

My take away from this isn't about how badly I failed, but about how gloriously God succeeded. He got a hold of me and I'm better off for it. He reached into my life and made me forget my phone. I got mad at first, like a brat, but finally realized God wants to work on me and that I need to give Him attention. Here's a good one that I've memorized:

Romans 8:28-29:

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those that are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Next time you get thrown a curve ball and feel your blood pressure rising, chill out. God's got a great plan for you and it's going to transform your character and attitude. You'll be more and more like Him as you unplug and give Him more and more of your life and time. He's got a purpose, now roll with some of the bumps on your life, recognizing that God's doing something eternal.