The road north from Grand Rapids to Sault Ste. Marie, like many Christians’ lives, begins well and ends well. In the middle, however, it gets sidetracked. A beautiful superhighway heads north through rolling countryside and you make good headway. Then, about 50 miles along the road, the government abruptly ran out of money, or the environmentalists stepped in, or the local politicians fell asleep once too often–and the road dribbles down to twisting two-lane blacktop.
Not that I minded on my recent trip north to Sudbury. It decrease your average miles per hour, but does increase the interest of the trip. Especially because it took me through some smaller towns. And it was lunch time. And I was hungry. And small towns usually have little diners with good home-style cookin’.
The Saturday traffic slowed as we came into the town of Lake City (pop. 1,000 I was told–I think they rounded it off). Let’s see. A Senior Citizens’ Center, the hairdresser’s, Nancy’s Place, the carpet store, State Farm Insurance. Ah, there, tucked in beside the hardware and an empty drug store. The Missaukee Cafe. I availed myself of the parking spot right in front.
The place looked like it had been lost somewhere in the Fifties. There were booths along one wall with black vinyl seating, trimmed in chrome. A counter with stools stretched the length of the other wall with a glass-fronted pie display behind it. But the warm air that enveloped me as I stepped in through the door carried the hint of things to come: just-made dinner rolls, real potatoes, and “from scratch” vegetable beef soup.
I ordered a Missaukee Deluxeburger and a milkshake. I hardly needed the shake, but when they hand- make them in those tall stainless containers, there’s always too much to fit into the glass. And they bring you the overflow as well. Like it’s something for free.
I sipped it slowly, each time topping it off with the extra bit from the stainless container. The waitress was moving from table to table, busying herself with the little tasks that filled her day. When she seemed to have a moment, I took the opportunity to talk to her about the Lord. She listened, but said little.
I left her one of our Justaminute tracts, paid my bill, and continued north. The days passed, my meetings finished on Tuesday night, and at about 9 pm I pointed the nose of my car for home.
It was 4 am when I pulled into Lake City. I turned onto the main street that skirts the eastern shore of Missaukee Lake. Up ahead, I saw emergency vehicles idling beside a block cordoned off with yellow police barricade. From within the barricade, acrid smoke rose into the predawn. A fire engine was pumping water onto the ashes of what had recently been a row of establishments: an empty drug store, the local hardware, the State Farm Insurance office, Nancy’s Place…and the Missaukee Cafe. Gone.
We call it real estate. Real is stated by the dictionary to mean “fixed, permanent, or immovable things.” So much for that! This world of ours, illusory, ephemeral, is made of next to nothing. Scientists tell us there is about the same proportion of nothing in matter as there is space in the universe. It’s not much to hold on to.
Peter left all to follow Jesus. He thought it was the only intelligent thing to do. When man’s day of building and hoarding and saving is done, he writes, “The day of the Lord will come…in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth also and the works therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be…?” (2 Pet. 3:10-12).
So that’s it, Peter. The Lord wants His people to be poor, right? Oh, no! “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved [kept] in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God…” (1 Pet. 1:3-5).
In fact, “His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness…exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature…” (2 Pet. 1:3-4). I need hardly tell you that this is better than earth’s real estate.
Goodbye, Missaukee Cafe.
Welcome to the real world.