B-ringg! I saw it was our son on the phone and greeted him warmly. His response was, "Is Dad there?" I handed over the phone, figuring man-talk.
But when I followed the conversation, I heard the name of our granddaughter who had just started middle-school. Obviously Howard was talking to her, in a subdued and compassionate tone. When he hung up, he told me the story.
It had been a stormy day with lightning and thunder, resulting in a malfunction of the school's security system. Alarms went off indicating an armed intruder in the building. The frightened students were herded to specified areas of protection where they hid. Police from the station across the street received the alarm, and stormed the building immediately. Thankfully, it was a false alarm.
But our sixth-grader had something to tell Pa-Pa. She said when she was so scared during the ordeal, a scripture came to mind, "Perfect love casts out fear." She concentrated on that and it calmed her.
Then she said, "Dad said you claimed that scripture when your store was robbed one time!"
Yes, my husband has told that story many times, when he and his office staff were marched up the stairs at gun-point by
desperate men. Hands up as they marched, Howard glimpsed a TV screen with a preacher pointing specifically at him, it seemed, saying, "Perfect love casts out fear!" He said if he ever needed that, it was then!
So that's why she wanted to talk to Pa-Pa! The thread of a common experience connected them. She was awed that those words were dropped into her heart, giving her comfort and reassurance, dropped in by her heavenly Father, now shared by her earthly grandfather!
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