Pizza & the man alone

Pizza is good.  The buffet at Double Dave’s is craaaaaazy good!  The particular location near us seems to flourish, and it must have something to do with the guy who bakes the cinnamon sticks.  His mix of cinnamon, sugar, and butter ranks way high in my book.  Put that next to Dave’s salad bar, and anytime my husband consents to going, I’m fast into the car.  The salad bar has sunflower seeds, boiled eggs, ham, green peppers, and lots more, and we have all those ingredients at home, but it tastes different at Dave’s and it’s fun.  The cashier asks if we want a certain type of pizza, and with great glee I request the barbecue chicken that quickly appears on the buffet line.  And to top it all off, they post a 2-for-1 coupon where you can buy 2 buffets and 2 drinks for $11 total.  For San Antonio prices, that’s pretty good.  Yet as fabulous as Dave’s is, something I witnessed there a couple of weeks ago bears greater praise than all their good food.  Dave’s hosts lots of baseball parties and all kinds of team events, and on this Saturday a young girls’ team entered.  One of the dads chose an empty table next to ours while most of the girls stayed to themselves.  For maybe 5 minutes, this dad sat alone and quiet until another dad asked, “May I join you here?”  The first dad looked up, seeming refreshed and quite open to the idea of company.  I'd seen the second dad change his mind on where to sit after noticing the first dad sitting solo.  It was a simple gesture yielding the grandest effect, and suddenly a memory triggered for me.  I’ve sat in that same seat of loneliness.  I remember how it can creep in and exhaust and debilitate without warning.  Even today as my husband and I sat at the kitchen table to sort through some papers, we saw an ad for an ice cream social and entertained the idea of attending until we realized we might not know anyone there.  Yet I thought of the dads at Double Dave's and have asked the Lord to lead us as to whether we should go after all to this event and share some ice cream and some conversation.  Perhaps He will connect us with someone in need, just as He has rescued me in my loneliness and desperation many times.  According to 2 Corinthians 1:4, the Lord is the one “who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God."