Sweetwater Presbyterian

Small in size, Large in Faith and Love

Devotion December 7, 2016

Greetings!

OK, I promise this is the last Jeopardy story.  I have to admit that one trip did generate a lot of fodder for these devotions - you know, that trip to California to watch my daughter compete on the game show Jeopardy (see how sneakily I worked in that proud momma moment!) but unless God sends a great inspiration I believe that pretty much most of the experiences we had in California have been rendered into devotions. 
Well, that is for this last one….
When you go to be a part of the Jeopardy show, the contestant is whisked away in a van very early in the morning and the family who is going to attend and watch the taping of the show is responsible for getting themselves there much later.
So my daughter left at some untimely early hour and her husband and I lounged around for quite a while until it was time for us to get into the rental car and make our way to the studio where the show was filmed.  
Fortunately the people in charge of the game show have figured out that there are many people who wing their way out to California and have no clue about where they are or what they are doing or how to get anywhere so they put you in a hotel that is a straight shot to where you have to go!  
So my son-in-law and I (well mostly him because he is very good at following directions!) easily found the gates to the studio lot and drove in and were directed to a parking building where we parked.  
Out of the car and walking down the sidewalk of the parking building we saw a big sign that said, “Jeopardy” which pretty much told us that perhaps this is where we needed to go!  
And it was.  You wait here at the big Jeopardy sign, sign in at a table where you receive a name tag and then you wait some more until someone comes and says, “Follow me” and we did…..
There were actually two groups of people who followed the person who said, “Follow me” - there were those of us who were there because we were with a Jeopardy contestant and there were those who were just people who came to sit in the audience.  
The two groups had different name tags and we were kind of kept separated.  Our group of contestant related people was substantially smaller than the group of people who were there just because they wanted to watch the show.  
So our small group was separated out and we began to walk with the person who said “Follow Me”.  It was quite a long walk and so we talked among ourselves getting to know one another - a little bit but you could tell we had a leariness of one another because we knew the people we were associated with where going to be competing against one another!
In our small group was this very nice lady, however she was also a very loud lady and had that kind of voice that when she talked it sort of transcended over all of us.  And this particular lady liked to talk and we quickly realized that this lady, nice as she was, really wanted everyone to know who she was - because she mentioned it as part of most of her sentences.  
“I was on Jeopardy a couple years ago.”  She stated loudly enough that not only did our little group hear her but a couple members of the group a ways in front of us turned to look our way.  After a moment of several of us going, “That’s nice!”  and “Good for you”  and trying to be polite (and admittedly it was pretty nifty).  After a few moments of silence as we continued to walk, again, loudly, we heard, “When I was on Jeopardy a couple years ago….”  
Someone else in our group decided that she needed acknowledged and said, “That is really interesting.” and we continued to walk (It was quite the jaunt from the parking building to the building where the show is filmed plus we had the mandatory bathroom stop along the way….)
There were during our walk at least 3 more very loud outbursts of “I was on Jeopardy a couple years ago” and lo and behold when we were finally seated in the Jeopardy audience seats my son in law and I ended up sitting beside of this once Jeopardy contestant who continued to loudly  explain everything there was to know about being a contestant on Jeopardy (she was there because her husband was now a contestant).  Then came on the everyone be quiet sign and I have to admit we were all quite relieved!  
I assume that this otherwise very nice lady just needed attention - just was one of these people who needed everyone to notice her and know who she was - and we certainly did by the end of our Jeopardy participation.
Isn’t it great to know that we don’t need to get the attention of God?  Isn’t it great to know that God knows every hair on our head (an interesting figure of speech to let us know how thoroughly he does know each of us) and we don’t have to do a thing to get his attention.  We have God’s attention before we even know we need God’s attention.  We have God’s attention when we think we are alone or deserted; we have God’s attention when we are doing good or doing bad or not doing anything at all.
And we don’t have to do anything to get him to notice us - isn’t that great!

Amen! 

Joanne