The Case of the Rubber Band

 

A week ago, Unions Springs Baptist Church in Randolph, Alabama hosted its annual community cookout. The church generally held it in July prior to the Fourth, but extreme July heat dictated a change of venue choosing September 26.

The fellowship is an outside event near a lake under a huge circus tent. There was a general worry. Days prior to the feast central Alabama was under an extreme drought and temperatures in triple digits. God blessed with rain and cooler weather arriving on the Wednesday before the shindig. Ain’t God good? He knows what He is doing is something that all of us should remember when things are not going as we planned.

Planning is a vital and statistic. The purpose of this event is evangelism. The philosophy of evangelism is event with a purpose and target. There is a Baptist belief: “If you feed them, they will come.” The motto of most Baptist eating is “Meet and Eat.”

The menu this year was “whole hog” barbeque, green beans, sweet potatoes, slaw, barbeque chicken quarters, and homemade ice cream accompanied with assorted deserts. We had a special treat this year as Jose and Tanya prepared authentic fresh tacos. Delicious I might add!

There were multiple people preparing the food, serving, and sharing. It is a big event with live music. There is not enough space to name all that helped.

My brothers, David and Glenn are great cooks. Mama taught us to cook saying, “You might marry a girl that can’t.” Glenn and his wife Dawn that he led in this event. Glenn always cooks a “whole hog.” When he and some help place it on the table, he places an apple its mouth and decorates around with vegetables. Folks take lots of pictures and consume lots of pig.

My brother David helps them but always cooks his favorite barbeque chicken quarters too. This year the chicken quarters experienced a slight delay. David’s father-in-law is senior advisor who has years of experience cooking the delicious fowl.

Whereas Glenn cooked the hog most of the night, James, David, and Roddy started early that morning. Retrieving the cooker, an old oil tank converted to a grill, several things occurred. First, there was a flat on one of the tires of the homemade apparatus. Finding a compressor David aired the tire. Next, using a golf cart the towed it to a specific location to start the process.

Trying to raise a door to place wood and charcoal David could not lift the door. Thinking that the rust had the hinges welded together he lubricated the hinges but could not open the door. James being the supervisor informed David that he had to remove a rubber band.

David looked and did not see one. David thought that the hinges needed some good old redneck ingenuity and proceeded to pound the hinges with a hammer. The hammer is a genuine fix all tool. David tried again and the door opened a little. Roddy and David both took time to thud the hinges to no avail. James repeated, “You got to take off the rubber band.”

David and Roddy just thought that James was having a “senior” moment. Roddy told David that he would get his acetenyl cutting torch to heat or cut the hinges. David tried again and opened the door a little more when he saw a rubber strap on the inside of the door. David thought, who puts a rubber strap on the inside of a cooker.

With each disappearing chicken quarter people snickered as the tale of the rubber band circulated and embellished to the gathering of the meet and eat evangelist event. It was an international event in rural Alabama. Life is better if we allow God to work. He wants us to plant seeds, cultivate, and reap.

“For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.” James 4:15 KJV

“Yet they did not listen or incline their ears, but stiffened their necks, that they should not hear, nor take correction.” Jeremiah 17:23 KJV

“So Moses hearkened to the voice of his father in law, and did all that he had said.” Exodus 18:24