There was once a good Christian family traveling in a faraway, distant land.

Ok, it was really just upstate New York. But they were traveling along visiting with other saints they hadn’t seen for a while when one night they went out to dinner. The dad was away from the table when the waitress came and took the drink orders, perhaps he was parking the car, or washing his hands. I don’t know that part of the story. What I did hear was that when he came back and sat down, the waitress was giving just about everyone ice tea. Then she asked what he wanted and he said, apparently, “Same.”

Well, off she went to get his drink and as he sat there chatting with his family what did she bring him but a Sam. As in Sam Adams!

Now, there’s a lot we could do with this little story. We might consider the difference just a letter makes. In fact, the lie Eve was told from the devil only contained three more letters than what God himself had said. It’s such a small thing to change life to lie, Sam to Same. But that’s not what I wanted to think about today.

Maybe we could contrast how the world thinks and expects people to act vs our being different and set apart. Why wouldn’t our dad want a Sams? Didn’t he have to put up with “are we there yet?” a zillion times? He’s on vacation after all, and can’t he take a break from being good all the time, day in and day out? Ah, but that’s not where we’re going.

Funny isn’t it how proprieties change? Drinking in a public place, with women and children present? At one time that was unheard of! How common and uncouth! He might as well been swearing, something else you simply didn’t do in front of children. Yet the waitress didn’t balk in the least. Society doesn’t do much to insulate the young from the harshness of life anymore – in fact they think this is backwards and ignorant. Shame is overrated and something we need to weed out and remove so we are free to express ourselves. Blah blah blah. But again, I really did want to consider something else.

What about those who he was visiting? Might they think “oh, he protests now but maybe he’s used to ordering Sams – it was just a slip on our behalf” and judge the dad harshly? What about his influence on those about him who see him? He looks just as “bad” as anyone else, instead of being set apart and sanctified. It’s easy to jump to this conclusion if we don’t know all the facts. But let’s press on.

You see, my thought for today was more practical than all of that. This isn’t a story about me, and I wasn’t there. So HOW did I know? Obviously I was told by someone who was there, and it wasn’t the dad. One of his family snitched. But no one had to tell God, he was there all along and saw the whole thing. Often we forget he sees all we do and say, and that includes the innocent heart of a father who really did just want some ice tea with his dinner.

Randy