Sanctuary

Monday Devotion

“Your love is more delightful than wine...Your name is like perfume poured out.”

Song of Songs 1:2, 3

Nancy Belcher and her husband, Chris, arrived in Italy to run the Venice Marathon.  They registered in a town called Mestre, which, like many Italian cities, doesn’t allow cars in the city center.  Nancy told Chris she’d jog to the registration area, pick up their packets, and meet him back outside after he found a place to park.

But after Nancy picked up the race packets and left to look for her husband, she found herself surrounded by six thousand runners and their family members, most of them drinking, laughing, and talking in different languages.  Nancy spent a frantic hour looking for Chris; they hadn’t planned a meeting place, nor did they yet have a hotel room.  They intended to just meet and then check in somewhere, but everything felt so new and so disorienting that Nancy had no clue where to look for Chris—and it was all so crowded!

Finally, Nancy remembered Chris had a cell phone, so with the help of an Italian desk clerk, she called her husband.  Initially, Nancy felt reassured to hear the dial tone, but her heart sank when she heard a ringing in her purse—she had Chris’s cell phone!