It's Tuesday, but Friday's Coming

S. M. Lockridge, an African American pastor, preached a well-known sermon with the title It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Coming

It’s Friday
Jesus is praying
Peter’s a sleeping
Judas is betraying
But Sunday’s comin’

It’s Friday
Pilate’s struggling
The council is conspiring
The crowd is vilifying
They don’t even know
That Sunday’s comin’...

And many more descriptions of Good Friday.  For our devotions this morning, Bill Musick, the VP of Human Resources at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, gave an adaptation of this that he called It’s Tuesday, but Friday’s Coming.   In it, he outlined a bunch of events leading up to the crucifixion, including the triumphal entry, the clearing of the temple, Judas’ plotting to betray Jesus.  Also, we all like sheep have gone astray, and we were not able to know God personally.  This was on Tuesday, but Friday was coming, a day that changed everything.

He summed everything up with four words:  Christ died for me.  A great reminder in this Easter week.

It rained on an off throughout the night and I woke up a couple times to the rain drumming on the roof of the RV.  So when we gathered in the maintenance building break room we were told that we would be refinishing furniture.  So I managed to sand down two small tables and a chair, and wondered just how many hours would be spent doing the same thing to hundreds of these pieces.  It’s a lot of work.  Up to this point, they have redone the furniture by pressure-washing it and then applying a coat of teak oil, however, this time, their condition warranted sanding down to fresh wood and applying two coats of teak oil.

In a higher-end maintenance group such as this one, which has every tool imaginable available to them, it’s good to see that duct tape is still an essential tool in their toolbox.

Deb and Bonnie went up to Shepherd’s Inn to help out with laundry, however the staff there said that they really didn’t have enough to do, even for their paid staff, so they came back down to the Administration building and rolled silverware.  They eventually ran out of napkins so they were done at 11:00am.  Not sure what she will be doing tomorrow since the chapel will be closed for bathroom renovation.

Since this is Easter week, all the maintenance guys get off at 2:30pm instead of 5:00pm every day this week.  That means we knock off about that time also.  Since we had some time available and it was still raining, we drove to Hendersonville, about a half-hour’s drive.  Deb wanted to check out a couple thrift stores, which turned out to be secondhand items at almost retail prices.  We found a parking lot right near downtown that would fit the RV and had chili for dinner, then walked downtown to the Appalachian Pinball Museum.

This is a place run by a couple brothers-in-law who were collectors and eventually decided to open their collection to the public. They have several dozen pinball machines and a few arcade-style video games all set to free play.  For twelve bucks a head, you can play as long as you like.  So we paid the ante and played pinball for a couple hours.

They have popular titles such as Twilight Zone, Addams Family, and two versions of Star Wars, with games dating from the 1970’s until the present.

The place was not busy at all, so we had our pick of machines and played just about all of them.

We talked to one of the owners.  He and his brother in law started collecting decades ago, buying and fixing machines and selling a few, and eventually had the idea of opening up to the public.  They opened a place in downtown Asheville and it turned out to be quite a hit, so they opened another place here in Hendersonville.  He said two was about all they could manage.  His brother-in-law is the one who fixes all the machines and it is a constant battle to keep them all running.  They close the Asheville location on Tuesdays for fixing and the Hendersonville location on Wednesdays.  

Asheville is the busier location, so we were glad we came here. We may end up at the Asheville location at some point, or maybe not.  I’ve been to similar pinball museums in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Seattle, Washington, among others, so I may have to go just to say I’ve been there.

On the way home we stopped at one of the few Culver’s in North Carolina for ice cream.

Pinball Wizard, Deb, killing it at Star Wars