A TALE OF TWO SERVICE STATIONS [Sun, 4-26-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL—Watching for the Spirit

A TALE OF TWO SERVICE STATIONS        [Sun, 4-26-20]

I either have told, or will tell—I work on several columns at the same time, so…--about going to a continuing ed conference with Jack Newsome at Dubuque Theological Seminary, led by Ted Campbell, who had just retired as senior pastor at Riverside Church in NYC. Here’s a story Ted told…

There were two Gulf gas stations that he frequented in NYC. Two, because one was near his house, and one was near his church. He went to either one, according to which worked best at the moment with his schedule.

Christmas came, and both stations gave him the same gift, a fountain pen, with lettering on it. One said, AAA Gulf Service. The other said, Rev. Ernest T. Campbell.

He said, “I started arranging my schedule so I could patronize the same station all the time. Can you guess which one?”

There are a lot of folks in this world who want our business-financial, spiritual, social, emotional. It’s worth a little inconvenience, even a lot of inconvenience, to patronize the folks who take the trouble to know who you are.

St. Augustine said, “God loves each of us as though there were only one of us.”

JRMcF

Do Gulf stations still exist? I haven’t seen any for a long time, but they used to be a major brand. I doubt that the Gulf stations in NYC looked like the one above, but that is a really neat picture.