The Storm/The “Pan”/The Hope

Written 4/12/2020—7:30pm. Posted 4/14/2020

Sitting in a darkened living room (we lost power about 15 minutes ago) expecting the power to be off all night due to storms which are passing through. We knew by TV (really great storm coverage out of Huntsville) that the threat of tornadoes has past us, but heavy rain is going to keep coming down till 10PM, or so. We had pretty heavy wind earlier, now just long slow moving rain storms.

All this sort of reminding me of the SIMH today: “Love Lifted Me”—started out being the country/pop crossover hit by the late Kenny Rogers, but in my head turned toward how much Christ’s “Love Lifted Me”—a beautiful old hymn. I can’t look up its history due to no internet power. But, if I remember, I’ll add it later. I mostly liked the verse that says, “Souls in danger, look above, Jesus completely saves!” “He will lift you by His love, out of the angry waves!” While not at sea, we feel like we’ve been tossed about the way the waves of wind have hit the house. But, He has lifted us by His love and we are at peace.

We still have the Blue Jug store closed, though we’re looking at getting it opened in a few days (by appointment only) at least a few days a week till the covid-19 issue is past. By appointment will mean the people will come in at their set time, fill their water jugs, pay by card, and we’ll step up between times and be sure everything touched will be sterile again. Sounds kinda silly writing it down. I guess it’s necessary. We may be too cautious, but better safe than sorry. Of all 9 stores, only two are closed, a third has shortened the number of days a week to 3. All the others are as usual. Each city and state has their own system of safety precautions and I suppose, that leaves us at the mercy of our local leaders.

Blue Jug, LLC is poised to be very busy after this episode is over. We have some very good prospects for new stores, several could develop rapidly. Locally, Sarah and Jason are set to begin the rest of their upgrade and new in-store applications with the Butter Snob Baking completion and the Smoothie, Kombucha, Coffee/Tea Bar being finished. They’re getting excited to finish and people ask about it in nearly every conversation. 

I was just thinking how absolutely sure I was that 2020 was going to be a fantastic year of growth in business and I was of a mind to think we would have an increase in local attendance at Bible Study, making this a very positive time. Now, here we are, almost a third of the way through the year; we missed the first half of January because the store wasn’t finished, we missed the last week + of March and now half of April with this pandemic. We never had more than two people show up for Bible Study and now for 4 straight weeks, no one—I just speak into the camera and put it out online to whomever will “tune us in.” The year just hasn’t started yet, has it? Maybe next week.

The lights have flickered, but now seem to have settled back into a non-working state. Oh, well, I can type in the dark. I make the same amount of mistakes whether I can see or not (ha!) Once when we lived in Catlin, IL, we had an ice storm hit the area, Our house was completely covered in ice, no power for several days. Interestingly, as the temperature stayed down in the lower 20s, our house never got below about 58degrees. The ice acted like an insulator—sorta makes me understand igloos, right?

Thanks for reading, the Elder