Some time during high school, I worked for a summer or two (I forget) up at Cedar Campus, a Christian retreat center in Michigan’s upper peninsula. I have a number of fond memories of that place. Actually one of my earliest memories is of that place as well — I think I was around five, making it around 1957. It was there that my dad first started reading Narnia stories to us — after he had been introduced to them by his friends Keith and Gladys Hunt.
Anyhow, back to high school. This was not really an important incident, but it is one that, for obvious reasons, is etched in my memory. There was a big log cabin lodge there, and the logs needed to have a periodic coat of creosote applied to them, and that was my job. Around the base of the lodge was a short wall of foundation stones, and very nice looking they were too, and I was instructed in no uncertain terms not to get any creosote on the stones. Okay, was my sentiment.
Now in order to do my job, I had to get way up on a ladder, near the top of the lodge. So there I was working away, like a faithful worker guy, and I accidentally dropped the bucket of creosote. And this is the part that is vividly etched in my memory. I recall looking straight down between two of the rungs as that can full of creosote wobbled its way down toward the stone ledge. The fall took, oh, fifteen minutes or so. I don’t recall praying, but it was in the highest degree likely that I was praying. The can hit what it was aiming for — the stone ledge — with a satisfying thwack — bounced, flipped away from the lodge, did a three sixty, and landed on the ground, not spilling a drop.
I am not saying that I interpreted this as a call to the ministry . . .