I’m a believer in three. Two times, well that’s not quite the same as three. It you are driving down the road and you see a parked yellow Volkswagen with a flat tire, you might notice it. If another mile goes by and you see another Volkswagen with a flat tire, you may grip the wheel a little tighter, but you still drive on.

If another mile goes by, and another Volkswagen is stopped with a flat tire, I will do more than just notice. I will stop my car and check to see if my tires are okay. I’m a believer in threes.

So today, my pastor called me to see if I could find the time to come to the church and pray for an hour or so, in preparation for the coming Easter. I had already said that I thought it was a good idea. So I told him I could do a Mondays from 9-10. He said that would be great, and he said he would send me a guide.

My first thought is that i’m pretty sure I know where the church is… I’ve been going there for more than thirty years.

Ten minutes later im checking Facebook and see a message from I friend that tells me about their upcoming birthday on Sunday, and that they are now old enough not to care about anybody’s ideas or bucket list suggestions. My first thought was to be helpful as I can.

My suggestion was to not have birthdays anymore because while it is nice to have one day where people are nice to you, and there might be presents, and maybe a celebratory dinner. Look at the cost! You are older, and you will just keep getting older. I thought I was addressing the problem logically.

The finally there is the Jeep, the third thing of my trilogy. My daughter had borrowed my Jeep for about a month while she was in the area. I wasn’t using it and she is very familiar with the weight and size of the vehicle. Being the person she is, she returned it cleaned up, oil changed and filled with gas. But she couldn’t fix one of the problems she noticed. According to her the fabric top had shrunk and now the top was letting the wind whistle through the cabin and soon the rain would follow.

I went outside to verify, and I could immediately see what she meant. Either the top had shrunk, or the Jeep had gotten fat, and a little muffin top was showing. I had to make a choice. Shrunk or Fat?

I’ve had the vehicle for more than ten years, what would cause it to do either thing in the last month?

My solution was obvious, I bought a brand new fabric top. If it fit perfectly then the Jeep didn’t get fat, the roof shrunk. If it didn’t fit, then the Jeep somehow expanded in the last month when I wasn’t driving it.

I brought the fabric top and tried to replace the old one. It didn’t fit. I thought about returning it and getting one size larger. I got it through Amazon, so I could return it like the pants I mistakenly purchased.

The problem was that I didn’t use the handout that came with the replacement top. So I read that, and watched a few YouTube tutorials. In the afternoon I backed up to the point of removing 32 screws for the header. It took three hours and I actually had the roof on all the way to the back. Unfortunately there were several inches right next to the windschield that would let wind and rain come flooding in. Apparently the Jeep was fat.

I slept on it. There was someone wrong with my logic. In the morning I again went backwards removing 32 screws, laying the roof upside down on the hood, tightening the screws and folding the fabric the header. This time, three hours later, the rooftop was tightly stretched, and it fit perfectly. The Jeep was not fat. It’s a good thing because tomorrow it is expected to rain.

It took the third instance to point out the fallacy of my logic. Perhaps birthdays don’t create age, it just marks the time.

Perhaps there won’t be someone in a raccoon cap and buckskins that will guide me to the church.

A warning… the power of three is for all of you!