Reece Gardner: Angels and blessings are all around us

I hope your Easter weekend was great in every way. I was able to attend a 6:30 a.m. sunrise service with many others at Faith Fellowship, after which we were all treated to a delicious breakfast. Too add to my Easter blessings, my beautiful daughter, Jessica, and her husband Bob will be coming in from Atlanta soon to spend a few days with me. 

It just doesn't get any better than that!  Also, my sister-in-law Gladys and her husband Daniel will be coming in from Ft. Lauderdale for a special observance in memory of My Emma. 

Blessings abound! And now I want to talk about how important it is to interact with others. By listening to each other we find that we often have experiences in our own lives that are similar to others.

A few years ago I highlighted a column written by Jennifer Shrader, who was at that time managing editor of The Free Press, in which she wrote about how she and three of her friends were on a journey by car from Illinois to Louisiana. She told about how they were on a desolate stretch of road in rural Louisiana at midnight with their gaslight flashing empty. 

Providence surely played a hand in this situation as they came upon an open gas station just as their car was running out of gas. 

You probably have had an experience similar to this. For me, I recall the time when my Emma and I went to visit our son Jason, who was stationed with the Marines in Yuma, Ariz. While there, we decided to drive to San Diego. If you have ever made that journey, you know there is a stretch of  mountainous roads that leave little room for error, since they are narrow, winding and almost always on the edge of an enormous cliff.

It was getting rather late when we left San Diego on our journey back to Yuma and it was completely
dark by the time we reached the mountains. Suddenly, our car lights stopped working and we found
ourselves on that high-mountain road without the ability to see where we were going. 

I will always be convinced we were visited by angels that night because within just a few yards of where we were there appeared an exit, which enabled us to get off the main road. That miracle grew even more obvious when we discovered that immediately off that exit there was a garage and a small motel. We were thus blessed with a safe place to spend the night and a mechanic who repaired our car early the next morning.

Now to close with a little humor: An elderly man in Australia had owned a large farm for several years. He had a large pond at the back, and he had fixed everything up with nice picnic tables and orange and lime trees. One evening, the old farmer went to the pond to look it over. 

He grabbed a 5-gallon bucket to take with him. As he neared the pond he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. 

As he came closer, he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his pond. When they saw him they all went to the deep end of the pond. One of the women shouted to him, "We're not coming out until you leave." 

The old gentleman replied, "I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim in the nude." 

Holding the bucket up he said, "I'm here to feed the alligator." 

Have a wonderful day!