Spiritual Food

All Sundays are special, but I think I'll remember this one for years to come.
The topic of both our Sunday School lesson and Pastor Jim's Sermon was John Chapter 6,
verses 1- 21; Jesus feeds the five thousand.


Half an hour before the 11:00 worship service,
a taxi pulled into the parking lot and paused near the door of the Fellowship Hall.
The taxi's passenger, an elderly black gentleman, motioned for me to approach.
Thinking he might need directions, I asked him if I could help.
"Do you have Black Jesus in there?" he asked smiling, motioning towards the Church.
Surprised, I said "No!"
 "You don't have Jesus in there?"
 "We have Jesus... I don't know about Black Jesus... just Jesus."
He laughed "Would it be all right if I worship here today?"
"Of course!" I smiled "We would love to have you join us."
"It's about 30 minutes until the 11:00 service" I told him.
"We have coffee and snacks in the Fellowship Hall. Would you like a snack?"
He said "Spiritual food is all I need."
As I escorted him towards the Sanctuary I asked him "What's your name?"
He said "Servant."
I felt my heart stop for an instant. I looked into his eyes, trying to decide whether he was teasing me.
Then he spelled his name "C.e.r.v.a.n.t.t."
I said "Oh! I'm pleased to meet you, my name's Dan"
As we walked to the Sanctuary he told me he first came to Atlanta in 1929.
One Sunday, shortly after he arrived, he decided to go to Church.
Being new in town, he decided to go into the first Church he came to.
He walked up Piedmont, which he said was "all black" at that time.
He turned onto Ponce and went into the first Church he saw, not aware it was a "white" Church.
He sat down, but he said the white preacher came up to him and asked him to leave.
The preacher told him he had been a missionary in Africa
but in Atlanta blacks and whites couldn't worship together, it was the law.
Mr. Cervantt said when he was in Atlanta 20 years later
he returned to the site where that Church had stood and it was gone, not a single brick was left.
"Can you guess what was in it's place?" he asked.
"Probably a parking lot." I guessed.
"It was a liquor store!"
No Spiritual food there, I thought.
The service was inspiring, the music heavenly, and Pastor Jim's sermon was real spiritual food.
A young boy's loaves and fishes were offered to our Lord.
Jesus used them to perform a miracle, to feed over five thousand hungry souls.
I didn't think to ask Mr. Cervantt how old he was in 1929.
Eighty years ago he may have been just a boy.
Just like the boy who offered up all he had to our Lord.

An Icemelt Story

The salesman never entered our office.
He stood in the corridor with our front door partially opened and asked our office manager
"Do you want to order the same amount of Icemelt you did last year?"


Surprised, she looked up and asked "Who are you?"


"I'm taking orders for Icemelt. This building always orders 800 pounds."
"You'll have to ask Dan" she said "He's our new Chief Engineer."


"Dan!" she called around the corner in the direction of my office,
"There's a guy here selling Icemelt."


I walked out to the reception area, the salesman never budged front our front door.
It was a few weeks after the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Olympic Games, early September.


"I haven't had a chance to check our inventory, I don't know how much we need."


"800 pounds."
"Excuse me?"
"800 pounds. This building always orders 800 pounds."
"I haven't had a chance to check our inventory. If you'll give me a few minutes I can let you know."
"If you had called before you dropped by" I continued, "I would have checked our inventory."


"I don't have time to wait," he insisted "This building ALWAYS orders 800 pounds."
"I'm placing the order today. He continued,
"You may want to order 1200 pounds. I hear it's going too be a BAD Winter!"


"It will only take me a few minutes to go and check..."


"No, I can't wait. If you don't get any you'll be sorry!"


"I'll bet we have some in inventory, we had a very mild Winter this year. I'll order 400 pounds."


"Your going to need more, probably 1200 pounds. It's going to be a BAD Winter."


"Put me down for 400 pounds, I'll get more later if I need it."


"I just order Icemelt once a year, there won't be any later."


"I may have a lot left over. We'll take 400 pounds!"


"All right, I hope you don't regret it..."


A few weeks later the 400 pounds of Icemelt arrived.
One of my engineers called me on the radio.
"Dan, Where do you want me to put the Icemelt?"


"Put it in the store room with the snow and ice equipment."


"It won't fit!"


"What do you mean it won't fit?"


"There's no more room in the store room. We 'll have to take some stuff out."


I went down to the store room to check out the situation.
Jammed into every nook and cranny of the store room
was over 2000 pounds of Icemelt!


14 years later, as all of North Georgia has completely run out of Icemelt,
I'll bet there are still over 1000 pounds at the Peachtree Summit Building!

An Ice Story

As we were bringing in our canned food for the Atlanta Urban Ministries food bank this past Sunday, I thought of how small gestures can have a huge impact on folks, especially folks who have been through difficult times.

Years ago, when I was still in property management, I was helping to plan a company Christmas party for around 50 employees and their spouses. Having spent a decade in the hotel business before getting into property management, I was accustomed to setting up ice carvings at most of the “fancy” parties and I decided we needed to have an ice carving. I contacted a friend who was a hotel Chef and ordered an ice carving shaped like our company logo. I faxed a sketch over to the Chef a few days before the party but he never got a copy of the sketch. In those pre-email, pre-cell phone days we weren’t as easy to track down and he decided to carve the 50 pound block of ice based on a description I had given him over the phone. Well, we apparently weren’t on the same page…

  The day of the party arrived and I went to fetch the Ice in my handy-dandy Ford F150. The Chef had carved the ice the day before and left it in the freezer of the ice house for me to pick up. When I got to the ice house, and they removed the plastic from the carving, my heart dropped like an icicle shattering on the frozen ground - it was all wrong!

   The carving looked nothing like our company logo but it was too late to fix it. The party was in a few hours and the ice really didn’t look that bad. So we loaded it into the handy-dandy F150 and headed for the party. We set the huge chunk of crystal clear frozen water on a lighted tray, spread 20 pounds of ice cubes around the base and added mounds of shrimp, scallops  and cocktail sauce.

   The boss came in to see how things were going, took one look at the carving, which looked like the pyramids of Giza, and declared “I refuse to pay for that. Get that embarrassment out of here!”

   Everyone else disagreed. They all said the carving was really nice and the seafood looked really tasty. “Let’s get on with the party!”

The guests arrived. The party started. Folks were mingling and enjoying the food when I overheard one of our building porters speaking to his wife. Mr. Otis was over 65 years old and had worked at the building over 25 years, since the day it opened. He was asking “Who brought the ice? Who is responsible for bringing this ice here?”

   I thought he was going to fuss at me for getting it wrong like the boss had, but I sheepishly put my hand up. “I did Mr. Otis. I brought the ice.”

He walked over to me and hugged me! He had tears in his eyes and said “Dan, when I was 15 years old my Daddy got me a job at the Capitol City Club. I was a busboy. We used to put on huge parties for some of the richest folks in Atlanta. All of those parties had ice carvings. I always wanted to have a party with ice! Thank you for getting this ice. It’s the best Christmas present I’ll get this year!”

   Mr. Otis retired the next year. I am so glad I went to the trouble to get that crazy ice carving. Isn’t it wild how a big old chunk of frozen water can mean so much to someone?