The biggest adventure of the past few weeks (and this is a good indication of the usual excitement level of our lives) has been administering medicine to our beloved pets, Misty and Teti. They both developed little scratches or something that didn’t seem to be healing up, so off to the vet we went. The vet didn’t know what was going on with them, so she decided to charge us for everything–er, I mean she decided to treat them for everything. So for 10 days I had to squirt liquid antibiotics into their mouths and anoint them with Tresaderm, twice a day. No one enjoyed this process one little bit. I got better at medicating them as time went on–the first couple of times more medicine got on their faces, my hands, my jeans, the floor, and whatever else was within a three-foot radius, than in their mouths. They go in to the vet again tomorrow, and I’m hoping the vet will say they’re okay.
Last week I got an unexpected phone call. I’ve gotten good at weeding out the telemarketers, who usually show up on the caller ID as “unavailable” or “private,” and the do-not-call list seems to have reduced the volume, despite whatever ridiculous legal maneuvers are going on with that. If it’s a local area code, I usually answer though; those are normally either for us or for the people who last had our phone number, as the phone co. seems to be reluctant to change the number over to our name, for whatever reason. I didn’t recognize this number and half-expected it to be the phone co. again (they seem incapable of getting the right name connected to the correct number, and seem to wish to be rewarded for this stellar service by having us switch our long-distance to them). It wasn’t, though, it was a Jehovah’s Witness. I’ve never gotten a evangelistic phone call before, but I did talk to JW’s on many occasions in Hyde Park, where they stop people on the streets and offer them Watchtowers. I got a really good impression of the JWs from those days–they were always really polite, didn’t try to keep you if you were in a hurry, and took an interest in you as a person if you cared to stop & talk. Also, the Watchtowers were by far the most pleasant itemI was ever offered by strangers while walking down 53rd Street. I can really see how lonely, disaffected people, of whom there are a lot in Chicago, would be attracted to JW because of that. I think we can learn something from their approach to evangelism; they get their point across without being annoying or pushy.
The lady on the phone was no exception. She did do that annoying bait-and-switch that a lot of evangelists seem to do; draw you into a conversation about one thing and then try to lead you into another. However, she was really nice and we had an interesting conversation about end-times (and by “interesting” I mean I did quite a bit of the talking :). I got to air my pet theories about end-times, which I will do again here, since I enjoyed it so much the first time:
I don’t worry about the end-times much, because God said we don’t know when Jesus is coming back, and I’m willing to accept that. Though he gives us some indications in prophecy of what end times will be like, I don’t believe these are meant to be formulaized by us, I think they are just hints to help us along. Also, I think Revelation etc. describes things that happen in all ages and to all Christians, and it is meant to provide comfort to us in every generation, not just at the end times. I think the lady on the phone was trying to get me to admit that we probably were in the end times, because she started out by talking about the problem of violence in GR, and asked if I thought things could get much worse than they are now. I said that I thought they could get much worse; I mean, when have things ever been better, at least for most people in this country?
She asked if she could call back some time, I said yes. I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to answer the phone (good old caller ID).