Chaplain's Corner!

The Mid America CES August 3 &4 weekend was quite an adventure. It started with the prayer "Lord get us there safely". A five hundred-mile trip with only one four mile back up due to construction. I also managed to lock my keys in the van while getting gas. While I lay under the van looking for a hidden key and praying, my daughter DeAnne found a young man with a big red toolbox. He was able to unlock the door in a matter of a couple of minutes and only charged $5.00. Praise the Lord!! We arrived at the track at about 8:00 PM Thursday. We were quite surprised at this modest, yet well-built race facility. My first tour of the track was with the escort of my little buddy Tom Steinbach by bicycle. The evening closed with true life stories from Dave Larson. Fridays' weather was beautiful as we tried to tame the track. My buddies Jon Bruner, John LaRue and Jim Steinbach were trying to show me how many different ways you could go off the track and I was learning well. Saturday's SBX race was a battle again with Jon, John, Jim and myself, with Jon Bruner coming out the winner. For me, it was the most physically exerted race of my life, a true stress test, and I lived. Relief came when Jon, John, DeAnne and I, followed by Greg tow with his waterproof cigarette, jumped into the track pond. The temperature that day had reached near 100.

The best way to explain this 2.23-mile road coarse would be like this. Put together the first turn at GingerMan, the declining radius at Gateway, two carrousels from I.R.P, and three sets of S's from GingerMan, the last turn at Blackhawk, with a 2220 foot straightaway and you'd be close. Now, when you but together all those individually maneuvered turns into a circuit you have the Mid-America racetrack.

The Lord's prayer is similar. It is not meant to be a rote, repetitious, thoughtless statement of biblical words, but a putting together of individual deeply meditated thoughts giving us a total expression, for a daily cry out to our God. Let me help you do this as an example from the beginning just to get started. Matthew 6; 9-13, "Our Father who art in heaven." "Our", includes my family, my church, and all those who have excepted His free grace of salvation from sin through Christ, but also He is my Father. "Father," what a wonderful thought. He's not just a power that set the universe, in order but, a loving, personal being who doesn't carry the flaws of my earthly father, but excepts me as I am, yet desiring and working to bring spiritual maturity into my life, that I might reflect His character to others. And He is in heaven, a place of perfection, beauty and authority, which someday will be my home.

Now that is just a start, into turn one, a wonderful circuit of prayer. It starts with the heavenly, goes to our physical needs, then to our emotional needs dealing with forgiveness and then a cry for help in regards to sin. And last, we need deliverance from the one, who keeps us from knowing this loving Father.

The weekend at the track for me concluded with a Saturday evening Kart show promoted by Jon Bruner and a Sunday morning chapel service this again was with the fellowship of DeAnne, Steinbach Family, Jon, John and Alpha Kart Family. Although the race attendance was low if you weren't there you missed quite an exciting weekend.

Chaplain Ken