Who’d A’ Thunk It?
Well, you know how it is. We were supposed to get to Nashville at 4:32 p.m.-ish on Tuesday afternoon. I knew when I saw a Delta mechanic go into the cockpit moments before we got on the plane in Los Angeles that something just might be amiss.
Sure enough. The microphone in one of the pilot oxygen masks wasn’t working. I didn’t even know a pilot oxygen mask had a microphone.
Well, after two hours of sitting on the plane, the crew told us to get off. Five hours and fifteen minutes after that, we took off from Los Angeles for Nashville on a different plane, arriving, not at 4:32 p.m.-ish, but at 11:30 p.m.-ish.
There is, of course, no great loss without some small gain. Actually there were many blessings. I finished my trip journal and finished categorizing my trip photos. We met many fellow passengers headed to Nashville. And we got to fly into Nashville at night instead of in the daytime. I am not sure I have ever gotten to do that before.
It was a beautiful sight to Ray and me. I know the earth has problems with light pollution and all that, and I love a nighttime sky filled with stars. Still, it was a beautiful sight.
We taught our children Tennessee history. Then, a few years later, we wrote Exploring Tennessee. We find the history of Nashville fascinating and sometime, when I have gotten more sleep that I have lately, maybe I’ll share some with you.
This time suffice it to say that Nashville was founded when two men, James Robertson and John Donelson, led pioneers here to start a settlement. John Donelson went on to Kentucky a short time later, but James Robertson stayed on as a leader among brave men and women.
As Ray and I gazed out the window Tuesday night at all those lights, Ray said, “What would James Robertson think?” I thought about that and also about the homeschooling pioneers of the 1980s. How could they imagine how many people today would be doing what they did as brave pioneers?
As we say around here, “Who’d a’ thunk it?
“He presented another parable to them, saying,
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed,
which a man took and sowed in his field;
and this is smaller than all other seeds,
but when it is full grown,
it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree,
so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”
Matthew 13:31-32
Keep planting those mustard seeds in your children’s hearts.
