Postcards From the Edge | A Letter to Weary People | Rev 3:7-13 | Week 7

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William Cimillo, on March 28, 1947, woke up and went to work like he did every other day.  He was a bus driver in New York City.  This day was a little bit different.  William started out on his normal route, and instead of making his first stop in New York City, he just kept driving.  He went to New Jersey and had a sandwich in a café for lunch, then he just kept driving more.  Driving and driving.  Eventually he got to Washington, D.C., in his RTD bus.  He got out, took a look at the White House and decided to keep going.  He traveled down the East Coast, from New York City to Hollywood, Florida, where eventually he ran out of money and gas.  He went for a night swim, camped that evening, and in the morning called his "former" employer.  He told them where he was and what he needed.  They sent the FBI to come and investigate---it was a state bus.  No one was able to drive the bus, so William had to drive the bus back to New York for them.  He did.  By the time he got there, word had spread about his little meltdown.  He was so popular that he was too popular to actually fire, so they had to keep him on staff.  They asked him what had happened, and he said, "I was just tired of it all.  I felt like a squirrel in a cage, just running around and around, and I guess it got the better of me."  I think he was greeted with such fanfare when he got back to New York because EVERYBODY has thought about doing the same thing.  Haven't we?  We've been on our way to work or an appointment and thought, "Heads: California, tails: Carolina."  Right?  It's just too much.  

I think a lot of our lives we feel like....{Ryan blows up a balloon}....we're full and life's good.  Sometimes, because that's the case at points in our life, we expect that it'll be the case at every point in our life.  But we all know that that's not true, don't we?  There's things that we walk through that sort of take the air out of us a little bit.  Some of you, in the last few weeks, have gotten a diagnosis from the doctor that you weren't hoping to get and. . . . .{Ryan releases air from the balloon} it's taken the air out of you.  Some of you in this room are single parents.  You're working and holding together a family {Ryan lets out more air from the balloon}, and it feels like you're on life support.  Like the waves are beating against your boat and when is it going to stop.  Some of you have some things that have happened in your past.  Maybe it's abuse or maybe it's bad decisions you've made, and anytime you let your mind relax, instead of disciplining yourself not to think about that. . . . .{Ryan releases more air out of the balloon} that's what you think about.  I don't know about you, but it can feel like {Ryan releases remaining air out of balloon and it's deflated} the life that we were suppose to live that is full, and meaningful, and vibrant, is elusive.  We live in a day and time where we are more disconnected from the things that fill our soul than any generation in any time has ever been.  We are entertained, but we're not enriched.  We're busy, but we are not full.  Our schedules are jammed packed, but our souls are on life support.  We can look at a picture like that and go, "That looks about right."  Especially after a week like, as a nation, we've walked through.  We can go, "It feels like we're running on empty."  It's a condition we would call weariness, or a tiredness of soul, not just body, but soul, where we know that if we cut things out of our schedule, it doesn't solve the problem.  If we go on vacation, it's still there...."