Time Machine

Yesterday I was minding my own business at the church office when my brain was suddenly seized, placed in a time machine, and vortexed backwards about 30-35 years.

Here's how it happened:

(Phone rings) "Congregational Church, this is Ted."

(Person on phone) "Hello Ted. This is Ted."

(Me) "Ted who?"

(person on phone) "The Ted who lived next door to you growing up."

On the phone was my best friend from boyhood in Cincinnati, Ohio. We probably haven't talked to each other since leaving Cincinnati in the early 1980's. But in a matter of moments, an old friendship was rekindled and floods of old memories were on the tip of my tongue:

Playing baseball at the end of the street, whiffle ball in Ted's backyard, volleyball, street hockey, football in the neighbor's backyard, basketball, badmiton, jarts.

Names of people who lived in our neighborhood: Sayers, Kleinhenz, Bachelors.

People we knew in High School: Wilson, Davis, Mayo.

After I got off the phone, I physically felt jet lag--that's how much my mind was reeling.

It wasn't long ago that I got to thinking about my past--college, junior high-high school, my years as a young kid. My thought was everything I did in the past seemed so... disconnected from me. I knew I did them, but they were distant and inaccessible, so far in the past they seemed.

And then my past calls on the phone.

Afterwards, I called my mother to tell her who I just talked with. She said, "Those memories have been there all this time. You just needed someone to prompt you." Indeed!

Verse 5 of Psalm 143 says, "I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done."

My friend Ted will be coming to Kansas for a visit in June. In the meantime, I'm going to be thinking about the past for a while.