Boy, Oh Boy, What A Day It Was

Dr. James L. Snyder

Throughout my years, I have had many crazy days. I guess it's crazy days that develop character. If so, I have a lot of character.

I never had a day quite like last week. Everything seemed to go wrong for me.

When we got up, our electricity was off. It had been off for many hours, and we had a few hours left before it would come back on.

The worst thing was that there was no coffee. How can you start a day without coffee?

In a few hours, the electricity was restored. We both took a deep sigh, thinking that was the worst of the day.

I looked at The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage and said, "Well, my dear, at least the day can't get any worse."

Oh, how I wish I had not said that. Because the day was beginning.

I got into my office, started working and was ready to print, and wouldn't you know it, my printer wasn't working. I thought I ran out of ink, but when I replaced it with new ink, nothing changed. My printer had died on me. I never realized how much I needed a printer until I didn't have one. I had to order a new printer, which would take a couple of days to come.

I sat down in my easy chair to drink some coffee, and The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage needed to run to the grocery store to pick up some items. That left me alone in the house for over an hour.

She no sooner got out the door when the telephone rang. I'm not too quick at answering telephone calls because most of them are scams. However, this call came in four times, so I thought it might be someone I knew, and I answered it.

The person on the phone asked me my name, and I told him my name, and then he said that my daughter was in an automobile accident, had broken her nose, and was in the hospital. He told me I need to talk to her attorney to work out the details of her bail money.

He gave me the name and number of the attorney, so I called him.

Before I called him, I thought I should call my daughter to see if these things are true. I'm a skeptic, and I like to verify what I'm hearing to ensure it's the truth. She didn't answer her phone. That caused me to worry because she never does that.

I called her attorney, and he explained the situation to me. It seems, and they have video proof, that my daughter ran a stoplight and hit an oncoming car. There was a lady in the car who was pregnant and had broken her collarbone. My daughter broke her nose.

I was pretty alarmed.

Then he explained to me that my daughter needed $6000 bail money to get her out of jail today. It had to be taken care of within an hour, or they couldn't do it until the next day.

I told him I didn't have enough money for that, I only had at best $2500. He said, "Well, I will check with the court to see if they'll go with that. Give me a call back as soon as you can."

I hung up the phone and then called my wife, but she didn't answer. I called my other daughter, and she replied, telling me that it was probably a scam.

I called the attorney back and told him I could only come up with the $2500. He said if I met him within an hour at Winn-Dixie, he could take care of the process there. I wouldn't have to go down to the jail.

I hung up my phone, and who was calling? You're right. It was my daughter who was supposed to be in jail.

We had an interesting conversation. She had not been out of her house all day. In fact, the reason she didn't answer the phone was that it was being charged. Incidentally, she's in the firefighters department, which was a little curious to me that "her attorney" didn't know that.

I decided to call the Sheriff's Department to obtain information about this and find out where my daughter was being held in jail. After an interesting conversation with the Sheriff's Department, they informed me that this was a scam and was happening all the time in our county.

There was nothing I could do about it because no money had exchanged hands, so I was powerless.

I decided to call my daughter's attorney. He answered the phone. I said, "I just want to thank you for getting my daughter out of jail. I appreciate that so very much."

He answered and said, "I'm glad I could help."

Then, before hanging up, I said, "By the way, my daughter was never in jail." When I said that, he hung up very quickly.

As I hung up the phone I thought of a Bible verse. “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

No matter how difficult my day, God’s faithfulness is more than enough.