Sunday, July 8, 2012: 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10; Mark 6:1-13

The GPS got us lost three times as my wife and I drove over the mountain trying to find a restaurant that our innkeepers called the best in the county. When we finally found the “town,” there was no town to speak of but only a bend in the road, a bridge, a couple of houses, a railroad trestle and an old general store. We later learned that it used to be a thriving town—before the flood of 1901 washed almost everything downstream.

I drove through the town and out the other end. No restaurant. I turned around and drove back down the hillside, looking more closely to the right and to the left. Still nothing except the houses and the run-down general store. But wait, the window of the store had “restaurant” painted on it. Really? I don’t know much about the restaurant business, but I know you have to have a certain amount of volume to maintain quality. This building looked abandoned. It hadn’t been painted since the flood—perhaps since Noah’s flood.

Maybe we had built up our expectations too high. While our son was away at camp we thought we would sneak away for a couple of nights in the mountains, eat a little good food and celebrate 20 years of marriage. Well, we decided, if a remodeled general store was the best the county had to offer, at least the company would be good even if the food was ordinary.