With the car out of gas and only seventy cents (in pennies) between us, Barry and I decided Saturday night that we'd hitchhike to Bethany Baptist Sunday morning.  It turned out to be a beautiful morning, blue-skied and warm enough to be sport coat weather.

When we stepped out on Snelling Avenue and stuck out our thumbs, we were wondering if the person who would pick us up would be on his way to church.  Since we were wearing sport coats, it would be obvious that was where we were going, so it seemed logical that anyone headed the same way would feel enough of a common bond to stop.

But we both knew, as we watched the cars going by, most of them filled with people dressed like we were, that no matter how logical it seemed, it wasn't likely.  We couldn't explain why, but it didn't seem like it would happen.  And it didn't; our first ride was with a high school kid on his way to a job at the Rose Bowl Lanes.

From there we walked to Mister Donut, where we spent all but nineteen of our seventy pennies on breakfast.  We wanted one more "for the road," so I asked the girl behind the counter if nineteen cents would be enough for two donuts.  She nodded, and when I asked for a buttermilk and a chocolate she took two buttermilk donuts and two chocolate donuts and put them in a bag.  "That'll be twenty cents," she said, as she took my nineteen cents and put them in the cash register.  She wasn't going to church either.

We got on County Road B going west, and car after church-bound car passed us by.  Finally a man in work clothes (with a cigarette in his mouth) stopped, and we climbed in.

We made it in time for the service and listened to a sermon on a text drawn from Galatians 6:  "So let us never tire of doing good, for if we do not slacken our efforts we shall in good time reap our harvest.  Therefore, as opportunity offers, let us work for the good of all, especially members of the household of faith."

When we walked out after the service we noticed ahead of us a couple that had passed us on their way to church.  We passed them and I said to Barry, "Should we hitchhike home?"  The girl heard me and laughed.  And maybe, since only ten minutes had passed since the sermon, and she hadn't gotten more than fifty feet away from the church--maybe she connected that incident with what the pastor had said.

On the way home I thought of something James Baldwin said in The Fire Next Time:  "If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer and more loving.  If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him."