A bunch of folks (all age groups) from church spent the week camping on the coast at Patrick's Point SP. I only stayed half of the week but got in some nice runs in the park and on Agate Beach (it's about 2.5 miles to the end of the spit). I pretty much had the beach to myself, those are my footprints in the second pic, taken on my return trip. Found lots of agates too.
We all had fun together around the campfire eating s'mores and such. Tuesday I went into Trinidad and stopped at a little hippie-new age-coffeeshop near the beach to work on my sermon. After awhile I got talking to an attractive young woman who celebrated her birthday this Thursday, just like me. Unlike me, she's turning 30. So she sat down with me and chatted awhile and then invited me to join her and some friends for a bonfire on the beach at sunset Thursday.
This is the sort of thing that only happens to me about once every half century or so.
The funny thing is, I didn't have to resist temptation (did I mention how attractive she was?) because there never was any. I was surprised that she sat down by me to talk (generally I'm invisible to women her age) and when she invited me to join her and her friends for an evening on the beach my one dominant thought was, "This will make a great story!"
But there was never any desire to "play it out and see where it leads". I'm hardly immune to lust, but I have no desire to er, complicate my life with such entanglements. I like my life and relationships just the way they are, thanks.
Granted, she probably meant her offer totally innocently and it probably wouldn't have lead to anything, but the sin is in getting involved with the hopes that it might. This time, at least, lust was superseded by bemusement.
The fact that the sermon I was working on was all about confession, repentance and the consequences of sinning- well, that might have helped too.
2 comments:
I've found young women approaching Women's Health Specialists surprisingly open to spiritual conversations with an old man like me and without sexual overtones. Of course, I'm old enough at 70 to perhaps evoke a granddaughterly response.
oh, this story keeps getting better and more interesting every time you told/tell it. Now, wouldn't it been interesting if you went and took along the whole camp with you too!? We could have had an evangelist retreat with hippies while eating some sort of sandy birthday marshmellos.
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