elfs | Matthew 6:6

This afternoon, I drove Omaha to the local pharmary to get herself a refill of her medication. Unfortunately, it seemed that things might take a while, but the pharmacy had a front it shared with a Starbucks, so I sat there with my laptop and dug the free wifi and tried to get work done. (Fat chance; I had a minor software project I wanted to make some progress on, but somehow the background image and all the sound files have gone missing. Frack.)

While I was there, I was... subjected... to a woman approximately my age, who was chatting with another woman a little older. The chatterer spoke ceasely for 25 minutes without pause. All about Jesus. And herself.

For 25 minutes, she badmouthed every man who had come into her life, and how Jesus spoke to her, about how she had the gift of prophecy but those men didn't, about how much a better person she was than most, man or woman, because she had the gift of prophecy and she got her teaching directly from Jesus, about how every person around her did drugs or pornography or "dirty music" and had gone downhill, but her life was lifted up, it was, because Jesus talked to her, and there were these "girls" who had joined the church, and who Jesus had clearly not spoken to yet, and yet who had "attitude" because they were "shallow," but not like our chatterer, oh no, because our chatterer was saved, yes she was, she had the gift of prophecy, yes she did, she heard the voice of Jesus like few others, yes she did.

Grief, woman, have you listened to yourself lately?