Saturday, November 8, 2008

The Punch line!

The thrilling conclusion to last week's post!

So, tonight in youth club we had wonderful guest speakers (I still can't remember their names. Was one of them Arthur?) and 'Arthur' was a doctor who had worked in a hospital in Africa and was talking to us about that, and how after his first 3 months he said to God 'I love being a doctor to these people, but please don't send me back to this hospital in particular!' And he said 'Well, God has a sense of humour, so I naturally ended up working at that hospital again!'
I was afraid my reaction would be "Gasp! God forced him back to a place he didn't want to go?!?" But my actual natural reaction was "Oh, cool, clearly that turned out well for him and his patients in the end!"

So, after a rousing conversation about the Rwandan Genocide with Nicoleymoley for completely unrelated reasons, I noticed it was winding down to time to get to my appointment with the brown-haired, white jumpered daughter! So I got into my bike gear (I look like an Inuit, I kid you not.) and headed off. I was kinda blazze about the thing at first, but I prayed as I biked, as I sometimes do, hopefully I don't get run over some day! And as I neared the stop I accepted that I'd just do my best to do whatever God wanted me to do, whatever it might be. I kinda felt like the girl wouldn't be there, though what you think is going to happen is never an indicator of what will happen!

However, in this case, I was pretty much bang on, the young lass was not there. But, arriving 'round 10:55, I thought I'd wait. I originally thought 11:10, but then I thought I'd wait 'till 11:11, seemed like a more fun time for something crazy to happen, what with the line of 1's and all, I guess! I prayed as I waited, hoping for guidance or whatever God wanted to happen to happen. Just waited around in my inuit gear at a bus stop, musta looked a bit weird to passers by, waiting for a bus next to another obvious mode of transport! So I waited and waited, and felt like I should be heading home a little early, but decided not to, this seemed like something I should wait the whole way through for. So I waited some more! Time was passing pretty quickly, I sent a text to Nicoleymoley telling her to thank her dad for reminding me to turn my lights on, waited a little more. It was around 11:08 when I started to notice the cars going by, and one of them slowly ground to a halt next to the bus stop. The window rolled down to reveal a dark-skinned young man, I thought it might have been one of the youth leaders at my church wondering why I was waiting around, but it wasn't! The following conversation isn't perfect, I don't remember it exactly, but this is the general gist of it! In a deep, heavy accent he inquired

The dude said "Hey, could you tell me how to get to the city street"
L:"Erm, where in it?"
Dude: "O'Connel street"
This was a little dodgy for me, as This was rathgar, and rathgar is pretty far away from O'connel street
L:"Ooooh, jeez, I dunno, erm, that's pretty far off, that's a really long road, I'm not sure if I can give you great directions, erm,"
I started looking around a little like a map'd magically fall out of the sky or someone would walk by that could just get in the car and take him there
L:"Ok, uh, why do you need to get there?"
Dude: "O'connel street" (I didn't hear him)
L:"Sorry, why do you need to get there?
Dude: "O'connel street, I'm not from around here."
L:"Ok, well, you take a left here, and there's this crossroads, and you should take the one on the left, and just follow down that road, and it's a really long road, until you hit a town called 'Rathmines', and, ok, hmmm, ok, after that you'll need to take a left and just head down the road a little ways and there'll be this little shopping centre thing, and it'll have a big swan on it, ok, so take a right from there, and just follow that road straight for a good while, and, ok, then you'll hit a town called 'Ranelagh', and from there you take a left, and you just keep going down that road, and it'll curve a little to the right, but keep going until you hit a bridge, it'll lead over a river, it's uh, like, like, a 'canal bank' (Patrick Kavanagh, don't fail me now! XD) and after that, uh, you'll be near the city centre, just take a right after you've crossed the bridge and gone on for a little bit, uh, I'm not too sure how to get there by car once you hit the city centre, so.."
Dude: "I can get there once I cross the bridge, don't worry."
L: Ok! uh, hope you get there safe and sound! Just ask for directions if you get lost, don't worry about it! God bless"

And with that, he pulled out, turned, and I just started praying once the conversation stopped, because I am pretty crap at directions, so I was certain he needed God's help on this one! "Lord, please keep him safe, uh, just direct him in where he should go, because I'm sure he'll need your guidance, man, that's such a hard road. Just help him to get there, and if he gets lost, help him to find someone to give him directions, eh, hehe,"
This started to sound a little familliar!
"Haha, thanks for that. Erm, just really make sure he gets there on time I guess, if he needs to get there on time, just really guide him as he's going down this really tricky road, I'm sure he'll need more than my words to get him there!"

And then I just started laughing, the whole thing was so... Analogical? I remember Gina was interpreting what happened last week, trying to get understanding and message from it, and I just thought this was rife with stuff like this, I mean, this prayer almost sounded like a prayer for a budding christian to me! And I just laughed and laughed, There was stuff to be learned from last week of course, but I think that this was just a punchline for the whole thing! It was pretty funny to me! I just laughed and laughed, I checked my watch, it was 11:10, I laughed some more, checked it again, it was 11:11, it was time for me to head home! Gina's words of "He thinks you're funny" and "He likes your sense of humour" were really hitting home for me, I really think God was really trying to give me a good laugh on this one! I was just laughing even as I was biking home, it wasn't a belly-laugh that's over quickly, but one of those sorts of jokes that lasts the day, that you just quietly titter at for the rest of the day! I said a quick prayer: "Seriously though, that was great! Erm, do guide that guy where you want him to go, I guess you might want to send him someplace else, and it'll be hilarious, and he'll love it, or maybe he won't, but it'll be your idea, so it'll be good! Or just guide him to O'connel street, sometimes what we have planned for us and what you have lined up for us line up!" Then I got home, a big ol' smile on my face, and my mom was watching dogma! It was that scene in particular where Bethany has a big breakdown and has to be comforted by the Metatron (Incorrectly spelled, I'd bet), and whether or not Dogma is an appropriate movie, I think God was really trying to communicate something to me, I was mid-blog when I heard Allen Rickman say "See? Didn't I tell you she (God) had a sense of humour?" It was a good night, allright! Hope that guy got to O'Connel street allright!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Haha
cool.

Newspaper headline the next day.

'polish ambassador reaches O'Connel street safely thanks to random inuit' :L

Phiasmir said...

Hahahaha!