The More Steps Forward I Take, The More Clear The View Ahead Becomes
I Start To Understand The Instructions Better
Well, I spent some time in prayer wondering about the words that had been spoken to me. I really wanted to understand it all better. Before you know it, I understood it all quite well, or at least I thought I did. Pieces just started to fall into place.
As strange as it all seemed, I found myself on quite an adventure, and it was with the One who I had been so comfortable confining to the limits of my prayer time and church time. Welcome to the next daily installment of this true story, which you can find posted here each afternoon.
Chapter 16: One Larry
A few of us from church sat around my friend Ron’s dining room table after the service having a Sunday afternoon supper. His daughter Stephanie, a firefighter, mentioned the story of One Larry to all of us at the table. Ron is in his eighties and his daughter is freshly retired.
I had mentioned that I would be going to Tulare, California to teach a political training, alongside a few other trainers.
To that Stephanie responded, “Oh, you’re going to One Larry?”
You see, Tulare is pronounced “Two Larry.” I thought it was just a play on words that she was making, but there was more to it than that.
Stephanie continued with something this, “Lots of fire departments require two firefighters in a truck that responds to a fire. If you have only one firefighter, that firefighter has to wait for someone else before he runs into a building to save someone. That is something other fire departments need to keep in mind when responding to a call there, so if someone was ever going to Tulare, we would say ‘Oh, you’re going to One Larry,’ since they only have one man in their fire trucks and we have to be prepared for that when showing up. Calling it One Larry was a way we reminded ourselves of that potentially life-saving detail.”
Or at least that was what my inexpert memory on the topic is able to recount. That being said, One Larry would figure a lot more prominently in my life than I would ever have expected, and I suspect the end of that story has not yet been written.
Little ole, middle of nowhere Tulare, California, who knew you would become part of this adventure? Not me.
Chapter 17: I Looked For Hymnals That Week
Well, I needed hymnals. And I prayed about that quite a bit, and was not sure what to do about it. It was a specific kind of hymnal I was supposed to bring on the train with me — a dozen of them, a kind that was in use in the mid-1990s and that had mostly fallen out of style. They were called With One Voice.
There was a racket among some Christian music publishers and national church bodies to keep pushing new hymnals on congregation. If you could get a congregation to update its hymnals every decade, publishers made three times as much money as if the hymnals were updated every thirty years. This was done in the name of staying relevant, but it did not escape anyone who had been to college that it was the exact same racket that colleges and textbook publishers played on college students beholden to the instructor and with no choice but to buy the prescribed newest edition of the textbook. There are a number of factors at play, but money might possibly be the biggest motivator.
The congregations that pushed back on this racket were usually the congregations that did not have the money, which is to say, the congregations that were once established and were now on the decline. Consequently, as I was in search of this specific hymnal, I found myself calling around to failing churches, as those were the only ones that had not updated their hymnals in thirty years. It was a slender, durable, lightweight, and handsome hymnal, that travelled well, could be portably packed, and contained a good mix of both old classics and contemporary songs. This was the hymnal that God sent me on a mission to go find a dozen of. There was one caveat: I was not allowed to buy them online. This was clearly a mission that was supposed to be accomplished by reaching out to churches. This was quite the endeavor, and left me quite discouraged with some of my co-religionists.
Church secretaries were effective gatekeepers. That was shown to me over and again. There was no chance I was going to reach a pastor. Where I found churches that had such hymnals and possessed some that could be theoretically given or sold, there was a second layer of gatekeeper. It was the church council, which would be meeting next five or six weeks from now. For all I know, there might even have been a third layer of gatekeeper after them. I could not find a church in which I was able to get a decision maker on the phone. Now, I do not expect every congregation to be willing to help a stranger on the phone pitching the church secretary. That would not work. It would be a huge distraction from their stated mission. But, I certainly expected to find a few churches in my search that would conduct themselves differently. I do not believe any church body existed in my search in which an individual, if prompted by the Holy Spirit to act, could have acted independently. I am not saying that any of them were prompted to help me or that any of them wanted to help me. I am not making that claim. But the structure I witnessed lent itself to inaction. That is what I am saying.
I soon remembered all too well what church life was like in the traditional church. It was about all kinds of things, but seldom was it about a relationship with Christ. Coffee hour and cookie sales and offerings and weddings, but was anyone even trying to listen to God? Was anyone even trying to read their Bible? Was anyone even trying to step out of the ordinary, permission-seeking, path-of-least-resistance, way of doing things?
I didn't expect any stranger to do anything for me. I, in fact, expected to make a rather large donation to a church in order to be able to have a dozen of their beat up hymnals that would likely get thrown in a dumpster after the next church rummage sale. I made enough phone calls to see that it was the norm that I was encountering. Praise the Lord that my walk with God was far removed from anything resembling that, though I think that stultification is something I, and every Christian, need to perpetually be on the lookout for. It is easy to point a finger at someone else. The likelihood is that it is you, yourself, that you most need to be examining at a moment when you feel compelled to point a finger at another.
How in your life are you building walls to defend yourself against the movement of the Holy Spirit? There are a hundred ways that I do it. I hope to be able to take a wrecking ball to every single one as I increasingly find ways that I am holding back from God. Consequently, as I identify those ways, I turn those areas of my life over to God and learn to be increasingly led by Him.
Chapter 18: Making My 200 Flyers
While the search for hymnals continued, I knew I needed 200 flyers. I printed the following on quarter sheets of paper at the local print shop. They charged $8. I wrapped them in a big sturdy envelope that the copy shop gave me. By wrapping them in that big sturdy envelope, I was able to keep the corners of each flyer nice and crisp even with rough handling of the envelope during travel. This is what was on my quarter sheets:
California Zephyr unofficial worship service (11/19-11/21/2023)
Come each day and come for each service.
Sunday 11/19
Service 1 - starts at Sunset
Monday 11/20
Service 2 - starts at Sunrise
Service 3 - starts at Sunset
Tuesday 11/21
Service 4 - starts at Sunrise
Service 5 - starts at Sunset (if we have not already arrived in Chicago)
We will sing a few easy-to-sing songs from a hymnal (which will be provided). We will have a reading out of the Bible, from the New Testament. And we will do a little praying.
Location
Plan A: the backside of the sightseer lounge
Plan B: (if the sightseer lounge is closed then) the cafe underneath the lounge will be where we gather
Plan C: (if sightseer lounge and cafe are both closed then) we will gather on the front side of the front-most coach car.
Come gather early for conversation and prayer. At sunrise and sunset each day we will start the worship service.
-Allan Stevo
This is a selection from my forthcoming book, “The Amtrak Vignettes.” A neat story began with the writing of “The Amtrak Vignettes” in October 2023. Every day until that story comes to an end, I intend to share a part of it here. It is a part of my faith journey as a Christian, a faith journey that has been deepened since the Ides of March 2020. Some of it gets pretty wild and nothing that a “reasonable” person would find himself in the midst of. Few will be scared off by it. Instead, many will grow deeper in their faith. I know that, because I know my readers well, and I know that few come here expecting me to give a milquetoast version of anything. Come here to be challenged. Stay here to have your life changed. That, I believe, is what will come of this work. You can support that work by signing up below.
Love this train light shining adventure!! I absolutely love riding the train and this was a great idea! Would love to see the response you got -- I'm sure it was good as there are so many thirsty people looking for a well.