A couple of events this past week have surprised me. Maybe it doesn’t take much to entertain me these days, but somehow these things seem worth remembering.

We have two remote devices for opening our garage door. One is in our car, which is stored in the garage. That one gets used a lot as we come and go from our house. The other one is in our truck. It doesn’t get used very often. Our truck is too tall for our garage door and it sits outside in the driveway when it is not being used. We drive our truck a lot less these days, as we often are traveling together or one of us is at home while the other is running errands. The two remote devices are not the same. One came with the house when we purchased it. The other was purchased from the Internet and is a different size and shape. The devices use different types of batteries. On Friday, we had both vehicles over at our son’s farm. I was at the farm cleaning up a couple of trees that we had cut in the orchard in preparation for new fruit trees that will be planted in the spring. Since I was using the chainsaw, Susan stopped by while I was felling the trees as a safety observer. She then returned home while I continued to pick up and haul branches and logs. When she got home, her remote device would not work to open the garage door. She got out of the car and used a keypad to enter a code that opened the door and put the car away. Later I returned with the truck. Because my clothes were covered with tree pitch and sawdust, I entered the house through the garage to shed my outer garments there rather than track dirt into the house. When I pushed the button on the remote in the truck the garage door didn’t open. I used the keypad to enter. I mentioned what had happened to Susan, who reported her experience to me.

I assumed that because both remotes were not working it must have something to do with the synchronization of the remotes. After all the opener was working when activated by the keypad or the inside switch. After trying several possible remedies and trying to diagnose the problem, I checked and I had a replacement battery on hand for one of the remotes. I replaced the battery and it worked perfectly. Later that day I stopped at the hardware store and picked up a replacement battery for the other remote. Problem solved! We are still wondering what the odds are of both batteries expiring on the same trip from the house. It seems like a highly unlikely event. Our son and his wife were entertained by the story when we reported it to them.

Then, yesterday, we had the fun experience of providing pulpit supply to a small congregation on an island not far from our home. We have visited the congregation a couple of times and enjoy the warmth of their fellowship. They have a wonderfully gifted pastor who is leading the congregation well. Part of the role of retired pastors is to support the ministries of active clergy, so when we were asked to supply the pulpit so the pastor could have a weekend off from work, we were glad to accept the invitation. It was a holiday weekend and the island community has many worshipers who have cottages on the island, and also have homes on the mainland. Attendance at the church was light yesterday. I think there were only 20 or 25 people total in the room including us. The congregation has an excellent pianist and they sing well together and worship was delightful. Although I’m a bit rusty, I think I delivered an acceptable sermon. I mentioned my home town and our school mascot during the sermon. It is something I frequently do when there are references to shepherds in the biblical texts chosen for worship. Yesterday being the festival of the reign of Christ, the gospel reading was about the separation of sheep from goats. After worship, congregation members served pie and coffee because they had hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for the community and there was leftover dessert. We stayed for quite a while after worship and were able to talk to most of the people who attended. One gentleman came up and introduced himself to me and commented that he enjoyed the sermon and could identify with my reference because he was born in the same small Montana town where I was born. His name was familiar to me and I knew his cousins and had often visited on the family homestead where his father had been working when he was born. He is a few years older than I and I don’t think we spent any time together as children, but it seems amazing that two people out of twenty attending worship on a small island in the Salish sea would have been born in the same small town of less than two thousand 850 miles away. I knew that he is older than I because he was born in a large private home a block away from our home that served as the community’s hospital and I was born in the “new” hospital behind our home that was built three years before my birth.

I am delighted with the simple joy of surprising events and chance meetings. When I read the opening of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible about the author’s experience of boredom and the repetition of life, I sense the contrast of that author’s experience with my own. Indeed, it seems to me as I grow older that the world is still filled with wonder and surprise. Those surprises bring a lot of joy to me and make my life seem like a wonderful adventure. They make me eager to go new places, meet new people and have new experiences. Sometimes I even learn new things.

I even have a supply of two different types of spare batteries for garage door remotes. Checking the battery is going to be the first thing I check next time one fails.