Photo Wednesday: Evangelical Street Edition

"God is Good"(above, written in pink)

A child's chalk musings on a Bedford Av sidewalk this week.
Interestingly there was a tombstone drawn as well (which I didn't capture well) just above this part of the drawing. The tombstone only had one date "1986"

I was going to write "hard to argue against the message", then I started debating with myself about whether the phrase "God is Good" is arguable or not.

Recently I was enjoying an appropriately summer styled bit of lounging on an Eastern Parkway bench near Franklin. I lay out on the three planks of wood like a banana man in his tropical hammock enjoying all aspects of the moment. After a while delibrately strolling down Franklin, hunger grabbed me so I headed for a local longtime food spot. Just as my mind began to taste my soon to be purchased morsels, it became clear I had no wallet. Worse, I had a wallet it simply wasn't with me any longer. Worst than that, I had only minutes earlier used my ATM card to withdraw $80 and I'd placed that cash in my wallet which was no longer with me.

The store proprietor asked, "anything else?" I answered "be right back" and I tore out of the store a man possessed. Seconds and shortness of breathe later I was back at my lounging spot on Eastern Parkway. I saw a mirage. My wallet lay under the bench visible to me from twenty feet away. It was open like a young girl's prom night heart. So surreal was the sceen, if my wallet would have shut itself, or better began to flap it's panels around the center crease, taking flight in the process and fluttering away all elusive butterfly like, I would not have been shocked at all. Either of those outcomes would be no more unbelievable than finding the wallet, ten minutes after dropping it, in broad daylight on a Saturday in July, with a twenty sticking up like a bookmark no less.

Later back at the food shop I answered the proprietor's question by telling my lost&found wallet story, to which she replied "God is Good!" Never knowing how to respond to that phrase personally, I didn't and instead offered a meaningless clump of loosely connected words. She again said "God is Good" and added as punctionation, (with the same cadence) "...all the time".

The provocateur in me chimed in. "well it wasn't a good time when that guy got shot earlier" referring to the verbal exchange that ended in gunfire on these same streets two weeks ago. The proprietor paused, I couldn't tell if she was going to lay into my irreverence or what. Finally she stopped her ponder and resumed her speech completing with, "...well those who ain't good, God gets".