Matters Of Faith

If you don't live in Anchorage, you may not have heard that we had an early winter storm last week. It was pretty severe and since it was an early winter storm, that came in the early fall, it did a lot more damage than you might have expected. For example, the giant flagpole on our parkstrip came crashing down.   Normally, a winter storm comes after the leaves (which are in essence sails) have fallen and after the bitter cold (which we always complain about) has frozen tree roots into the soil. As it was, with trees flying like birds, our power went off just after we went to bed and was off all night. Luckily, it doesn't take a lot of electricity to sleep, so we weren't too inconvenienced, but as of this morning, there were still a few hundred people without power.
Being without power was the theme, or at least an opening salvo, in the sermon at church today. The pastor, who we'd never seen before (possibly because we aren't exactly regular churchgoers any more) stressed the power of praying always.
After church, I strapped some tools and a ladder with balloons tied on the end for safety, onto my bike trailer and rode across town to help a friend replace his carport roof, the original roof having decamped during the storm. The trailer was pretty heavy and the trailer hitch was attached poorly, so when it pulled loose, it pulled the rear wheel off my bike. This happened just as I arrived at Rich's house, which you could ascribe to Providence, if I'd been praying. As it was, as likely to have been HealthSouth.
Finally, this thought came to me on the ride; maybe Mitt Romney should have spent as much time doing oppo research on Joseph Smith as he has on Barack Obama.