Put your trust in God, but lock your car.

Good morning,
I pray the day finds you well.

I'm a kid that grew up in Kansas; more specifically, I grew up in the far northwest corner of Kansas.

Do you know what is in the far northwest corner of Kansas? A lot of sky, a lot of open country and a lot of farm land.

Do you know what is not in the far northwest corner of Kansas? People, there really aren't a lot of people in the far northwest corner of Kansas. The last time I looked we had about 5,000 people in our county, which by the way covers around 1,000 square miles. This translates into around 5 people per square mile, but wait there's more!

In the far northwest corner of Kansas is a town! it has roughly 2000 people in it, yes I know it is a metropolis!! If you take the 2000 people that are all in one spot of our neck of the plain (I would say woods, but there really isn't a lot of woods going on in the far northwest corner of Kansas) that leaves roughly 3,000 people for the rest of the county, or 3 people per square mile.

But those 3 people per square mile were people you could count on. If you needed something they were there.

I now live by a river in the Cascade Mountains very near a large town that is very close to a much larger town. There is roughly 1 million people in the metro area, and we are all under quarantine or shelter in place, or stay at home orders...What ever you want to call it.

I turned on the news and they were taking about inquiries to divorce attorneys were on the rise because people had to stay home together all this during the first week. They were showing pictures of empty store shelves and other crazy stuff.

Did I mention that I grew up in the far northwest corner of Kansas?

Did I also mention that we realistically only had 3 people per square mile?

After college I joined the Navy.

I joined the Navy and we sailed around the Pacific Ocean a lot.

Do you know what is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? A lot of water, a lot of sky, a lot of stars

Do you know what isn't in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? People, there aren't a lot of people in the Pacific Ocean. All we had was each other on the boat. We knew that if something went wrong all we had was each other to get us through it (Like Typhoon Percy, which sank a bunch of ships and knocked a 13' hole in our bow.) If we hadn't all worked together I would not be here to tell this story.

I saw this church sign the other day, "Put your trust in God, but lock your car."

I get what the sign was conveying. But I do come from a part of the world where we did not lock our cars, we did not have to.

I love the fact that our YMCA is changing its operational structure to meet the needs of the current social landscape. It reminds me of my little town in the far northwest corner of Kansas. I reminds me of my shipmates when things went wrong.

Put your trust in God, that is true.

You can also trust the YMCA will be there for you too.

A shout out to all my YMCA family, "Well done good and faithful servant."

I am humbled and proud to be part of this family.

Blessings,