Pastor's Page

                                                       2/24/2010

                                           A Word from the Pastor

"Professor spends time in hospital after fall from tree." That headline in a newspaper a few years ago did its job. It sparked enough curiosity that I decided to read the article.
AIt seems that a 69-year-old professor of health education and general safety broke both collarbones and his sternum when he fell out of a persimmon tree. A colleague gave a simple explanation of how it happened. "He loves persimmons. He climbed up there to get the one he admired, I suppose. The limb broke and he fell."
The broken bones in the professor's chest bruised his heart. I cringed when I thought of how painful the experience must have been. But I couldn't help but smile at the incongruity of it all. A professor of general safety falling from a tree? I wonder if he changed his lecture notes after the experience or if he just tried to abide by what he was already teaching.
Then I thought of other seeming incongruities. Doctors who become ill. Plumbers whose sinks stop up. Writers who misspell words. Preachers who sin. Service station owners whose cars run out of gas. Funeral directors who die.
Is there a lesson in any of this? Perhaps. Maybe we ought to realize that an expert in any field is not immune to problems in the very matters over which people think he should have control. That might fit each of us. So be careful. And don't be too quick to judge others who fail.

Bro. Donnie