"YOU THINK HE WAS MAD?..."
An important business executive boarded the New-Orleans-to-Washington train. He was a heavy sleeper, and he needed to be awakened in order to get off the train in Atlanta about five o’clock in the morning. He found a porter and told him, "I want you to awaken me in order that I might get off the train at five o’clock in the morning. Now I’m a heavy sleeper," he said. "It doesn’t matter how much I fret and fuss and fume or what I do to you — I have to get off the train in Atlanta. If you have to remove me bodily," he said, "you get me off this train in Atlanta."
Well, the next morning he awakened about nine o’clock, having slept all night and having missed Atlanta, speeding toward Washington. He located the porter and really poured it on with all sorts of abusive language, almost attacking the poor guy bodily. After he left, someone said to the porter, "Wow! That the maddest man I ever saw!"
The porter said, "That’s nothing! You think he was angry--you should’ve heard that poor guy I mistakenly threw off the train in Atlanta this morning!"
(From a sermon by Stephen Sheane, "Angry With God" 2/23/2009)