Thinking About Luke
This morning while making the drive to work, I thought about the ‘trust’ article I wrote last night and the ties to how church views Christian man. For some reason, I immediately thought about a friend of mine who I had not seen in years because he and his family moved.
I thought about Luke
Luke (not his real name) is a friend (and ex co-worker) that I had the great pleasure of meeting. He is a Godly man that is deeply concerned about his children and their future. Poor Luke is a perfect example of the man I discussed in the ‘trust’ article and in some ways combined with the ‘Married Man’ character portrayed on the John Boy and Billy Big Show.
He wore clothes that were re-stitched and sewed up with shoes that were almost worn out while his wife was impeccably dressed. He drove a fifteen year old hatchback with dry rotted seats, power windows that quit working, engine misfiring, etc. while his wife had to get a minivan or SUV every three years (even though they signed the dotted line for five years). He had his ‘allowance’ for gas money and ate microwave popcorn everyday for lunch chased down with his water bottle refilled from the water fountain in the hallway that led to the bathrooms.
One day Luke asked me if I wanted to go out for lunch. I replied ‘yes’ (knowing that this was a very rare thing for Luke to do). So we went out to lunch and he got one of those ‘combo’ meals and made sure he got his receipt. We proceeded to eat our lunch and he asked me if I could come over that evening around 7 and take a look at his computer because it was acting very funny and erratic. I gladly responded ‘yes’ because Luke was a good friend and I wanted to see if I could fix it saving him some money in the process.
I pulled up in the parking lot of their townhouse about 6:50 and parked the truck in the special ‘profiled’ space called ‘visitor’. I got out of the truck and started to walk up the sidewalk to the door when I heard yelling. It was Luke’s wife ‘Sarah’ (not her name) ranting about where was Luke at lunchtime when she called on the cellphone that he accidentally left on his desk. Luke told her that he went out to lunch with me and another coworker to talk about their computer that was broken. She got upset and yelled for him to show her the receipt as proof. When he pulled out the receipt, then she started screaming at him for spending five dollars at lunch and tried to guilt trip him stating that he was selfish and did not care about the welfare of the children. She asked who he went out to lunch and Luke told him ‘Adam and Bob’. “Oh Bob, the guy that likes fast and exotic cars and the scantly-clad girls that model them and is the bad influence that tries to convince you that you need and deserve a new car….’ She went on and on yelling for a couple of minutes about he needed ‘real Christian men’ friends rather than people like Bob and poor Luke was getting a verbal tongue lashing.
Enough was enough….. I knocked on the door to save Luke from any more humiliation.
Sarah answers the door and said ‘Oh.. you must be Bob. come in…. LUKE!!!!!!!! Sarah walks away from the front door and leaves me there!’
Luke came out of the kitchen with two bottled waters, tells me to come on in, and offers one of the bottled water bottles to me. I gladly accepted and we proceeded to his ‘office’ where the computer was located. Sarah went to the laundry room slamming down laundry baskets and slammed the washing machine door to let us know that she was in the midst. Luke and I continued to work on the computer as it was very slow to boot up and took forever to do the most mundane of tasks. After about thirty minutes of clearing out spyware and viruses and enduring the constant interruptions from Sarah, the computer was back up to running like normal again. After the computer was fixed and Sarah walked out of the office, I felt something tugging at my jacket near my pocket and when I went to see what was going on, I saw Luke’s hand come out of my jacket pocket. I placed my hand in the coat pocket and discovered two twenty dollar bills that were not mine because I knew that the jacket pocket was empty.
Luke replied that he put them there as gratitude for my services and verbally thanked me. I told him that he didn’t need to be sneaky about it and he whispered that he took the money out of the family ‘piggybank’ because it would have cost him about a hundred dollars at the repair shop and that I saved him a lot of money and that I did a service to him and deserved something in return for fixing the computer. He proceeded to tell me if Sarah found out that he did this, there would be ‘grief’. I told him that I did this as a favor out of gratitude when he listened to me and prayed for me one afternoon when I was moping one day about being rejected once again by another Christian single woman who thought that I was not a good enough Christian for her. Luke insisted that I take the money which I reluctantly did while being worried about Luke.
I left his house and proceeded back home for the night.
I felt sorry for Luke. I prayed and prayed for Luke and asked God to protect me from meeting a woman like Sarah that micro-managed the checkbook and spent all the money and made my buddy feel guilty for wanting a new car to replace the old worn out one. I prayed for a wife that would not be bossy, manipulative, and respected me for who I am and not try to re-invent me.
I wonder about him today and hope that he has found some cool Godly men to help him out along the way of life.
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Comments
First of all, I think Luke is a fluke. I don’ t see this at all. Sure, there will always be “girly men” as our governator out here calls them. But what I hear and read at women’s conferences is how the woman can support her man. As for the men, in our church, they are holding car shows and church golf classics. The golf game raises money to send our youth on missions and the auto show introduced our church to our city. Our men wear nice clothes and some of our elders wear shorts because they want to, not because they cannot afford better. I don’t like the shorts thing in church but perhaps that is me.
I think what I am saying is perhaps it is easy…and I see this in blogs all the time (probably including mine) to take a specific geographical trait and generalize it to be all over he country.
And, for all of us clueless Californians, what in the world is the John Boy and Billy Big show??