sticking bits of trash in my pants pocket

Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household to give them their food at the proper time? Matthew 24:24

So yesterday, on my way over to family dinner, I once again gave blood at the local Red Cross station.  And the questioning process is constantly being refined and more invasive, like do they really need to know the birthday of my last child and now it’s everywhere outside of Canada and the United States that I have been in past three years and yes, when I was seventeen, I gave blood under a different name.

And when I was seventeen-years-old, I heard about my Papa Coverdale who had given blood to the Red Cross so regularly and consistently that he had received a lifetime award of some kind, and something in my seventeen-year-old heart vowed to honor him the rest of my life by giving blood. 

So I figure I will keep going back every eight weeks, even though I have to drink extra fluids and pop a multi-vitamin pill. And the girl who was filling up bags yesterday (and now they are up to six test tubes as well) was new, like I think this was her first day, and she had someone supervising her, and it took a really long time, and she contaminated the first round and then missed the vein in the other arm and it hurt like Billy Blue and her supervisor had to come do it again, even though it is all rather time-consuming and I have a big bruise in my elbow and no one would ever know if I stopped donating. 

Because somehow it has built into me this thing about being faithful in small things.  And yesterday a parent fussed at me about picking up trash on campus because “isn’t that the kids’ job?” But I always pick up trash. When we were little kids we would always take an after-dinner walk up towards the falls. And we always picked up trash along the highway because that is what we did. And I still do.

And I don’t understand really what these last days will be like, with the abomination of desolation and the wars and rumors of wars that seem to have been with us always. And when at last the Son of Man will come on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And no one knows concerning that day and hour not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.

But I do know that I want to be found faithful. In my small things, awake and ready. Sort of like that now very faded and now paper-thin shirt someone gave me a long time ago, PARATUS VOLENS POTENS.  

For His honor and glory.