Believe Me!"

 "Why didn't you tell me it was like this?" I asked my husband as we went into the restaurant behind the motel we stayed in the night before.  As soon as we drove into the parking area, I couldn't believe that Howard knew about this place all along and hadn't conveyed it effectively to me.  We were  on a trip to our daughter's in Georgia and had stayed at the "Casey Jones Motel" in Jackson, Tennessee, a quaint-looking modest-but-clean lodging on Highway I-40 between Memphis and Nashville.

In fact, Howard had checked it out on an earlier trip, coming back to the car and telling me the room wasn't very nice, then checking us in at a chain motel across the highway.  By the time we stop on these trips, I'm always so exhausted I don't want to leave the room to get something to eat, but just collapse on the bed and persuade him to bring me a burger.

That long ago night he kept saying that the desk clerk said there was a good place to eat at a nearby buffet.  The way he explained it, I thought it was part of a franchise chain that we'd frequented when we lived in Mississippi, and I declined, despite his urging.

I'd done the same thing last night, when he'd gone out and got me a hamburger at a "store."  This morning I was hoping to shop for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel I'd seen advertised on a billboard the night before.  But this was 'way better than Cracker Barrel!  It was called "The Old Country Store," and in fact, it was the prototype for the large chain.  "They tried to get us to franchise with them," the clerk behind the counter told me.  "But we are a family.  We wanted to keep the personal touch."

Their bountiful breakfast buffet was impressive.  Not only were there mounds of scrambled eggs, several kinds of breakfast meats, grits, gravy, and biscuits, but also a large, freestanding griddle in the center of the room where the cook turned the griddle cakes right on to your plate.  Then there was the long fruit bar constantly being replenished with prettily arranged melon, peaches, strawberries, and almost any fruit you could imagine.

Then the store!  All kinds of antique signs and decor, like Cracker Barrel, only more authentic-looking and more plentiful.  They even had Davy Crockett's jacket displayed in a glass case.  There were several departments in the store, including a fast food counter, a deli-type counter, a soda fountain, and even a genuine country store of long ago that had been hauled to the property and attached and preserved exactly as it had been when the father of the owner had had his first job there.

In fact, there was a whole village of stores--Casey Jones Village--old trains, and many other attractions I can't wait to see when we go back through there.  This time I know what I'd be missing!  God showed me a parallel here.  Do we fail to convey the goodness of God to people?  Or the hope of Heaven? Or worse yet, the terrors of Hell?  Too often, I'm sure, we shrug as if to say oh, well, I tried, and they're not not interested. But they just don't know what they're missing! (Or not!")