By Bill Elders
I WROTE A STORY in this paper that was printed in the April 2025 edition on page three (my first attempt) and casually mentioned that I thought our Lord has a sense of humour. A few people said that they liked the story. I have since remembered another humorous event that took place in my life that involved myself and our Lord. It really happened.
We have five children and after high school all attended their education at various schools, and of course that involved five different cities. So, what else would you expect?
They involved Windsor, London, Waterloo, Hamilton and one wanted to go to the UofM.
Now, in our area of Southern Ontario, this usually refers to the University of Michigan. But NO, she meant the University of Manitoba which is in Winnipeg. Good grief!
But it was her decision. We agreed, and in 1988, we took her out there, 1200 miles and a two-and-a-half-day drive with camper trailer. All went well and after leaving her all alone, we went south to visit daughter number one who is older and was already teaching elementary school in the Omaha Nebraska area.
Kids get around, again all went well, but she did learn that in winter, in Winnipeg, minus 40 is COLD! We settled into a Sunday evening phone call routine to gab and keep her connected with family.
Now this story happened on Easter weekend.
We had our long phone chat as usual, when I casually asked, “Did you get to church today?” So hang on now for the details.
You see, shortly after she got to the UofM, she got involved with a school-based religious group. All went well and she became friends with another girl whose last name was ALBERS, which was close to hers (ELDERS) and so the other young people in the group referred to them as sisters. That’s nice. This girl and her family were from Guiana (or Guyana) in South America, which would suggest she was of colour as in black, very black, and our daughter is white. Sisters? OK, that’s humorous.
This girl lived with her family about 50 miles north of Winnipeg, and it was a long weekend, so she invited our daughter to come home for the Easter weekend with her. She agreed and again, all went well.
Now she found out that her “sister’s” father was a teacher. Well, I am a teacher! And he teaches in the local high school. So do I. He is a shop teacher, and so am I. He teaches auto-shop, and so do I. And he is working on an old car, and so am I!
Now this is very interesting. They are Anglicans and so are we, of course. Saturday night he was reading his Bible and so was I, because he was doing a reading on Sunday, so was I. The first reading… So was I… So, we were reading the same verses. WOW! How about that?
So next morning, they were all at church. (Were our churches names the same?) And it comes time for the father to do his reading. But a lady in front of him got up and proceeded to go to the front and read. Oh no! One of them had obviously made a mistake. What should he do? So he just kept quiet and did the second reading, without reading it first, and of course he had to find it. But all went well.
You wonder what happened to me in Chatham? How could my adventure top that one?
Well, our Lord was certainly laughing because when I prepared to get up to do the first reading, a lady also stood up in front of me and proceeded to do the reading. Oh NO! I had to do the second reading with no preparation. But no, hold on. It got even worse.
One of our members (George Down) looked after the Bible Readers group and he would tell us ahead when we read and he would find the correct pages and mark them with a ribbon and even pencil-mark the exact verses for us. Simple, eh? Well George was away that day and the pages were not marked ahead of time, and the first reader did not flip the pages to the second reader’s place as was usually done. Good grief. I forgot exactly what the second reading was, but it was around six short ones and hard to find in a hurry (Corinthians, Galatians etc.) Oh no again! I got flustered. I gave up and asked Rev. Larry Brown to please find the place for me. Very embarrassing, for sure!
I did not check to find out when their church service started but it was in Manitoba which is an hour behind us in time zones, so if our service started at 11 am and theirs at 10 am, they would be taking place at the same time regardless of time zones. Did our Lord arrange this so that our Bible readings were taking place at exactly the same time? Could our Lord do this? Of course he could. But would he? Would that be in his realm of humour? The Bible says we are made in his image. So if we know humour, so does he! Did our Lord set this up? You decide.
When our church in Chatham closed, I was in charge of cleaning it out. On that occasion I took out the Bible that we read from. Little did we know the building would be demolished so cleaning meant nothing (even our expensive church lights were demolished). But I have that big Bible in my possession. The building is gone. The memories remain.
Bill Elders is a Holy Trinity/St. Paul's, Chatham parishioner.