Gigi's Blog

Chicken Delay

visioncgbc | July 07, 2008 13:03

July 4th is Nanny Vickie’s birthday.  So every July 4th for the past…………I’d say 15+ years, my entire family is together somewhere enjoying the 4th.  This year though Nanny wanted to go eat lunch, and then said for everyone to just do “whatever.”  Holly and I conspired to go to Carowinds.  So after eating lunch we headed off.  I had read on their website that they would be having an all-u-can eat buffet for about $12 a person.  Now if you’ve been there lately then you know that a drink cost $3.75, and to get a portion of food that could feed a toddler cost about $8.00.  So I suggested that we should buy a ticket for this buffet.  First thing when we got there we bought our ticket and went to the water park.  The water park was very crowded, but we still had a good time. After swimming around in the wave pool and being bombarded by the people who had inner tubes (you have to pay for them, so we didn’t one) Holly, me and Rachel went to the lazy river and Rich, Mark and the Rebekah and Chloe rode slides. We stayed there until our meal and then headed over for our food extravaganza (or so I thought).  I said “Oh, this is gonna be perfect.  We can eat and then we won’t need to buy anything else.  This is gonna be so good.”  We walked up and there was a long line of people waiting to eat.  What was this line all about????  A man who looked like a manager came up and said “Hey how are y’all doing?  Just wanted to let you guys know we have a chicken delay.”  Now Richard is one of my favorite people on the planet, ‘because he loves to tease and joke with people.  He said “Chicken delay.  Hm.  Chicken delay.”  He then starts asking him silly, funny questions, and all of a sudden the manager knows he’s joking around, and then the manager (I think) feels a bit relieved to encounter a person that’s not mad.  Then the joking was really on.  Richard would go up to people and say “Have you heard there’s a chicken delay?”  It was so funny.  There were only 2 actual buffet lines with food, when they had it set up to make you think there were many buffet lines.  So we tried to get soft drinks in a place that didn’t have any, went to a buffet line with only plates and cutlery, and stood in line for about 20 minutes because of the “chicken delay.”  Then…………..finally……….chicken!  Ya baby.  It was so on.  I start loading my plate with hot dogs and chicken.  We sat down and I started eating.  Eating very, very salty hot dogs. Eating chicken that was-well, sort of ok.  Drinking in very small glasses so that it would only take a few gulps and I’d have to travel up hill, both ways in the snow for 10 miles to get a refill (Ok, I made the up hill snow part up.)  We left and for the remainder of the day rode rides, and watched fireworks, and then waited about 1 ½ hr. (no joke) to get out of the parking lot.  

We went to the shelter and cooked Saturday and it was good and yet it was also, well I don’t know exactly.  But my passion for the homeless has yet again been renewed and I had conversations with people, and encountered a gentleman who was very, very intoxicated last time I saw him, but this time wasn’t.  It was incredible how different he was when he was sober.  I mean not just his actions, his entire demeanor. I feel very passionate about my desire and what I believe is a call from God to reach out to people and say “You know what?  God loves you. God accepts you.  He’s not waiting for you to do this or that.  You are loved, already.”    This is my conviction, and my belief.  Other people have strong convictions as well about what they believe their callings are.  They aren’t all the same.  Whatever you believe is your calling from God, please PLEASE, PLEASE go after it with all your heart.  If we did that as Christians-watch out!  Something would happen.  But, mediocrity is where most of us are.  I realize that I am passionate about the things that I am passionate about, and maybe not as concerned about other things, even that are in the body.  But I AM passionate about God.  That’s what I want for you, to be passionate about God.  When I’m in the presence of lukewarm, I get sick.  I get distracted, depressed, selfish, and on and on.  I’ve come to the realization since I’ve returned from M-Fuge some simple facts:

1. When I am doing things for Christ, I feel good and I feel satisfied

2. The simpler, the better

3. The things that I once banked my happiness on all seemed to be like a bounced check,        worth very little, maybe nothing. 

I’m in a very strange place today.  Emotionally I mean.   See just like that chicken, which was a buffet of OK food, my life lately has been like a smorgasbord of OK-ness with God, and I’ve realized there isn’t such a thing.   I must break away and out of the shell that I feel like others require.  Can I be specific??  Ok good.  Is it Ok to go hang out a bar and witness?  I mean have a coke, sit down, and share the hope you have in Christ?  I can tell you right now, unequivocally that Jesus would have ABSOLUTELY been at a bar and witnessed.  But the problem is if someone I knew saw me there, how quickly they would get home so they could call tell what they’d seen.  Shouldn’t be that way.  Shouldn’t be that way at all.  You know me, or you should.  We should have enough faith in each other that we don’t have to wonder if we’ve “slipped in sin” and if you wonder, then ask me-not everybody but me.  What I’m saying is do what God calls you to do.  You must.  Do it with all your being.  Do it with all your might.  Do it with all your heart.  Don’t pay the price of your daily life to digest a buffet of what others tell you that you must eat.  Do and be whatever God tells you. 

I Corinthians 10 19-22Do you see the difference? Sacrifices offered to idols are offered to nothing, for what's the idol but a nothing? Or worse than nothing, a minus, a demon! I don't want you to become part of something that reduces you to less than yourself. And you can't have it both ways, banqueting with the Master one day and slumming with demons the next. Besides, the Master won't put up with it. He wants us—all or nothing. Do you think you can get off with anything less?  23-24Looking at it one way, you could say, "Anything goes. Because of God's immense generosity and grace, we don't have to dissect and scrutinize every action to see if it will pass muster." But the point is not to just get by. We want to live well, but our foremost efforts should be to help others live well.  25-28With that as a base to work from, common sense can take you the rest of the way. Eat anything sold at the butcher shop, for instance; you don't have to run an "idolatry test" on every item. "The earth," after all, "is God's, and everything in it." That "everything" certainly includes the leg of lamb in the butcher shop. If a nonbeliever invites you to dinner and you feel like going, go ahead and enjoy yourself; eat everything placed before you. It would be both bad manners and bad spirituality to cross-examine your host on the ethical purity of each course as it is served. On the other hand, if he goes out of his way to tell you that this or that was sacrificed to god or goddess so-and-so, you should pass. Even though you may be indifferent as to where it came from, he isn't, and you don't want to send mixed messages to him about who you are worshiping.

 29-30But, except for these special cases, I'm not going to walk around on eggshells worrying about what small-minded people might say; I'm going to stride free and easy, knowing what our large-minded Master has already said. If I eat what is served to me, grateful to God for what is on the table, how can I worry about what someone will say? I thanked God for it and he blessed it! 31-33So eat your meals heartily, not worrying about what others say about you—you're eating to God's glory, after all, not to please them. As a matter of fact, do everything that way, heartily and freely to God's glory. At the same time, don't be callous in your exercise of freedom, thoughtlessly stepping on the toes of those who aren't as free as you are. I try my best to be considerate of everyone's feelings in all these matters; I hope you will be, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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