The Parking Lot

Be kind to one another, tender hearted... Eph 4:32

"It is so hot out here, you could fry an egg on the sidewalk!"

I don’t recall the first time I heard this statement, but I do remember I was a little guy, so it was either Ft Rucker, Ft Benning, GA, or Ft Hood TX. Logic would tell me it was Ft Hood, a summer climate 2 degrees shy of Hades itself: Rucker and Benning, 3 degrees. Of course, curiosity got the better of me. I remember snitching an egg from the fridge and cracking it on the pavement. It took a while, but sure enough, the thing started getting white and soon we had a nice sunny side up fried egg.

It has been that kind of hot in Montgomery all summer. What I call cussin’ hot. We have had a string of days that has cracked 100; add our humidity, and the heat index has been well into the 105 to 108 range. This thing should be called the misery index.

During this string of seething fury, I scurried from the AC of my truck to the AC of my office through the parking lot at work. A quick side note on my profession: I am a Rehabilitation Counselor with the Alabama Dept. Of Rehabilitation Services. I have been coming to the same complex for 23 years. I love my work and our agency; we have a goal and an outcome, to assist Alabama’s citizens with disabilities in going to work. Our Commissioner is a man I have known for most of those years, an ex marine and fellow soldier of the cross, a true leader who we love and respect. I noticed something as I was cutting through the humidity, an elderly couple was struggling to get their adult son out of a van and into a wheelchair. I stopped and told them to stop; let me get some help. I grabbed a buddy of mine, we got on either side of the man, slid him in his wheelchair and took them to their appointed place. Am I sharing this because I want to you to think I am some kind of noble Christian? Hardly.

I passed my secretary and pulled up my office door. A few hot tears started running down the corners of my eyes. What a self centered oaf I have become. These kinds of things go on everyday of my life in our parking lot, in our building, and in my plain view. The Mad Hatter has been known to walk on by. I’m more into administration now, a money manager, a liaison to the local rehabilitation facilities. I am too busy for such acts of human kindness. I have been more concerned with the quelling of my own misery index rather than the pursuance of Eph. 4:32. What an encrusted layer of expediency I have allowed to accumulate around me. NO more!

I have told you about one of my friends who, as the scripture says, (Matt. 6:3-4) does not let his left hand know what his right hand is doing. I won’t go into some of the acts of kindness that I have found out he has done, because he would beat me to a pulp. I have been on the receiving end of his blessings many times. I have made a decision, I can do this also, a small act of human kindness, at least once a day, and make it a left hand / right hand experience. It will be kind of like an ‘inside joke’ just between me and my Heavenly Father.

The journey to those familiar places...continues...

Mark the Mad Hatter
Prov 17:22