I am selfish.
I am, deep down inside, selfish. I don’t want to be known as selfish, but I think I am.
If I am honest with myself I think I am more concerned about not being seen as an ass than I am with actually not being an ass.
Tonight God decided to stretch me in this regard.
I had just arrived back from our Community Group meeting (that is church small group), and had just fired up the Wii and got another shocking score on the Wii Age thingy (which is supposed to tell you how ‘young’ you are, I got 36, which is bad when you consider that on Monday I was 23). Basically I am just settling down and getting into my ‘going to bed’ routine.
My cell phone rings, it is my sister.
- Wendy: Hi Ron, Sorry for calling so late (it’s just after 10pm)
- Me: Hi Wends, no problem (inside I am saying: its 10 o’clock I should have just ignored the phone – you see – selfish).
- Wendy: Lucien was driving home, and the car has packed up, and he is stopped in a rather dangerous position. can you go and help him? (Lucien is my brother-in-law)
- Me: Sure, where is he (To myself: But I am really not keen on the idea, don’t you know I just started my exercise routine?)
- …
You won’t believe what I did next… I FINISHED THE BASEBALL TRAINING SEGMENT I WAS BUSY WITH WHEN THE CALL FIRST CAME THROUGH.
In the end the 3 mins it took to finish did not matter, cause Wendy had also called my brother, Kevin, and he called to offer me a lift (Kev lives quite close to me and I am on his way to the break down site).
So 10 minutes later Kev, Lucien and I are standing on the side of the highway, trying to divert traffic with a torch (while not blinding the drivers) because The car’s battery is so dead that the hazard lights could only manage a half hearted attempt at flashing every minuet or so.
It turned out to be quite fun. Just the guys, hanging out together. Telling bad customer service stories.
The point is that initially I would not have wanted to be there, but in the end had fun with my brothers, helped one of them out of a not-so-nice situation, and got a good blog post idea, all of which would not have happened if I had decided to ignore the call (who calls so late at night anyway?).
So, seriously, thanks to Wendy, Lucien and Kevin for helping me exercise my selflessness muscle.
But it is 00:02 now and I have to go to bed.
No man Ron. hehehe
Where is God stretching me? Has to be with the how pledge thing for the big move – beeeeeeeg stretch.