Last night we, Glenn and I, flew into Boston. It was around midnight when we landed and there had been only one half-hour delay. Glenn commented as we were headed to the rental car desk, “Well, that all went fairly smoothly. Good flights…and paid for with frequent flyer miles, so this is all good.”
He did not know that the “fairly smoothly” was about to turn into a “middle-of-the-nightmare” that would finally land us in our bed in Wakefield, MA at around 3:30 a.m. There was no car, though payment had already been made. Options were to take Uber and then come back the 27 miles tomorrow via Uber to get our car, or call Delta and try and get them to switch to a different car company since we had booked through Delta, or just wait—maybe an hour-and-a-half or so— till the car company had someone else to return a car.
We picked the call Delta option; only we got an answering service that said the phone wait time would be, minimally, an hour. So, next, we picked the wait for a car option. I sat there in the giant lobby of a deserted car rental terminal while Glenn went away somewhere, disappearing down an escalator. Since my phone was dead, I was not sure where he was going. I later found out he was going out into the thirty-degree weather, sans coat of any kind, to stand in a long line of people who, like us, were waiting for someone to bring back a car. People were saying, “Oh, it doesn’t matter at this point that I rented that Mustang convertible. I’ll take whatever that is driving up. A Kia compact?….Fine!” And that’s exactly how Glenn felt, too. After all, even that little Hyundai that we finally drove away had a heater.
And then there was the thirty-minute wait at the drive-off window while the people tried to figure out how to honor the voucher Glenn had been given because they didn’t have the car. When they found out that the desk, back in Iceland, had failed to give Glenn the required rental switcheroo paperwork, they were not going to let us drive away. The GPS ETA to our hotel clicked on to well past 2:30 a.m. Then, once we were on the freeway, there was the night time construction work. The more we drove, it seemed the later the ETA. Parking places were at a premium at the hotel at 3:00 am, but, thankfully luggage carts were a-dime-a-dozen.
As I lay there in that warm bed, one little insignificant scene kept playing through my mind. The tall man with the grey mustache in the long khaki trench coat. He came bustling through the terminal, brief case in hand, saying to his friend, “I’ll get the car. It’s a Hertz…and I’ll meet you at the curb.”
They were only a few feet from me, so I thought maybe I could save him the trouble. I said, “But Hertz doesn’t have any cars.”
“Oh, they’ll have mine,” he said. “I’m in the President’s Club. It’ll be there.”
Never in my life have I wanted to be in the President’s Club so badly. I wondered how much it costs to be in that club. Can people borrow membership in that club from other people? Can you get a membership on the spot?
I looked to see if my phone had charged enough to text my husband. I texted “A man came through and he said they do have cars for people in the President’s Club.”
Glenn shot back “He was right.”
So I’m thinking now about the most rewarding “in group”…the “in Christ” group. There’s a very small percentage of the world’s population that has met every requirement to have the ultimate reservation ( I Peter 1:4); the reservation that’s absolutely certain to provide. It’s foolproof. This “in group” can be confident, just like the man in the long trench coat. There’s no exclusivity based on externals or wealth. It’s simply exclusive of those who failed to accept the benefits of the blood of Jesus, for without the blood there can be no remission of sins (Hebrews 9:22). The benefits include all spiritual blessings, and redemption and forgiveness of sins (Ephesians1). They include the waiver of due condemnation (Romans 8:1) and the opportunity for eternity with God in heaven. Membership gives the ability to say, with confidence, “Oh, mine will be there. I’m in Christ. I’m in the church that has a full assurance about the reservation.” I’d love to help you be in this church. Romans 6:3,4 says we contact the blood, the requirement for entrance, in baptism. Are you a candidate for membership? I’d love to talk with you about the benefits…straight from and in the very words of the Holy Spirit. You will, like me in that airport, (times a billion and more) wish you were in this group when the time comes to redeem all of the ultimate reservations. I love being in the sure group. It’s not a haughty thing to be sure. It’s a trusting thing.
