Parents, Spring Has Sprung! Words From COVID 19 quarantine*

 Parents, Spring has Sprung. I remember as a boy being so excited when Spring came after the cold weather. I enjoyed the warmth of the Sun after having to bundle up to stay warm when going outside. But I recall that Spring was always fickle. Usually by Easter, we had enjoyed some warm days; days warmed enough to wear shorts or go out in short sleeves a few times... and I don’t mean upper 30/lower 40’s warm, where kids in Ohio think its a heat wave and wear shorts and run down the street with no shirt, SMH, BRRR. I mean like mid 70’s warm. But there was always another deep freeze or two coming before Summer. Looking back to childhood, Mom made a big deal out of Easter clothes for my sister and me. Yes, one year, I had the light blue pastel and white striped Seersucker suit with shorts, I guess I should be glad the outfit didn’t include the straw hat with ribbons hanging off and matching two toned saddle oxfords, with white socks. Apparently, we get the word “Seersucker” from Hindi and it originates from two words meaning “milk” and “sugar.” As a kid I thought it meant, “dressed up” and “uncomfortable”… just give me some well worn Sears Toughskins jeans and t-shirt with the tag cut off. But we dressed up for church, especially Easter. My biggest anticipation for that day was to hunt the couple of dozen Easter Eggs that Mom had boiled hard and helped us dye with PAAS and vinegar the day before. I wanted to get up and hunt eggs before church, but that didn’t happen because everyone was getting ready. I expected to go to church in my Easter Sunday Best, come home, put on my Toughskins, made into Jorts by my Mom after I had worn through the padded knees by sliding on them all the time, and hunt eggs. But NOOO! I got up and it was cold and windy. Spring had given up once again to Old Man Winter. Yet, because I had a Seersucker outfit, I had to wear it to church. I nearly froze to death, but apparently cold doesn’t count when Mom wants “cute” and I would outgrow it before Easter the next year. When we got home, I ran to my room to change out of my pastel pretty-boy suit, only to have to change back for Easter pictures. Then I grabbed the Easter basket, ready to go hunt some eggs, but we had to eat first. The meal usually included ham, yams, some sort of green beans, salad or something and some deviled eggs (these were usually the casualties of the egg dying the day before… and BTW why would we have eggs from the Devil if Easter was such a Holy Day? IDK) and carrot cake (who knew carrots could taste so good?). Finally, my sister and I convinced my Mom to hide some eggs for us outside. Oh my! It was still really cold, but we found them, shivering, teeth chattering and blue lipped. Then it was time for the second round, which we moved inside and my sister and I hid them for each other all around the house. There was always that one egg we couldn’t find, assumed it cracked and was made into the devil’s egg, but several days later, caused a horrible smell, and instigated another more intense egg hunt.

As we read about the very first Easter/Resurrection Day, written by the once “bad egg,” Roman IRS agent named Matthew, who was found and called out by Jesus to become His disciple and a gospel writer, we understand that some Jesus-follower ladies, both named Mary, were eagerly seeking the One they loved, Who had been crucified and placed in a tomb sealed with a great stone. The former tax collector tells us, “After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to view the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, because an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and approached the tomb. He rolled back the stone and was sitting on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow. The guards were so shaken by fear of him that they became like dead men. The angel told the women, ‘Don't be afraid, because I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. For he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, 'He has risen from the dead and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; you will see him there.' Listen, I have told you.’ So, departing quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, they ran to tell his disciples the news. Just then Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ They came up, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus told them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to leave for Galilee, and they will see me there.’" Matthew 28:1-10 (CSBBible) Even when Spring weather and other things on this planet can be fickle, we can rely on Jesus to always be True to His Word. He said He would be resurrected again, and He was! God promises that if we seek Him with our whole heart, He will be found by us (Jeremiah 29:13-14). If you are hunting eggs this Easter in your Seersucker outfit, be reminded that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, that’s us!.( Luke 19:10). He won’t stop until He finds us, no matter how rotten we may be. Be found by Jesus right now by seeking Him with your whole heart, in spite of the unreliable fickleness of this world.

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!

Parents, The Rough Places Will Be Made Smooth!** Words From COVID19 quarantine

By Photo: Myrabella / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12686604

Parents, the rough places will be made smooth. As a young boy, I was both fearful and excited about going ice skating. In my town, there was an ice skating rink called the “Ice Chalet.” My mother, who was determined to give us as many experiences as possible, had signed my sister and me up for skating lessons. She had also signed us up for sailing, diving, swim, skiing, television camera, tennis, and several other kinds of lessons, which we enjoyed but probably didn’t fully appreciate at the time. We arrived at the Ice Chalet and walked inside to a lobby decorated like an Alpine Lodge. The smell was very distinct, unlike any I had ever smelled before, kind of like a frozen water/sweaty skates/mildewed wet carpet and hot chocolate/grilled cheese/french fries from the concession stand kind of smell. We rented our skates, handed them our own shoes, which seemed a little weird to me, though I could see them over the tall counter, in the cubby where my skates had come from, on the vast wall of skates and shoes from tini-tiny to giant skates. The first pair didn’t fit because I had two pairs of socks on. So, with some help from my mother, I laced and tied my skates and attempted to walk toward the door to the ice rink. My ankles flopped and buckled. My little spindly legs looked like spaghetti noodles wiggling from a fork, as they tried to support my weight on the two knife blades secured to these boots with screws. I was excited to get the brown (boy) skates, rather than the white (girl) skates, unlike the other boy in the class that arrived too late for brown in his size. My sister and I made our way, wobbly legged to the ice to try our skills at perambulating on the frozen water. We had enjoyed swimming in the indoor pool, but this was a totally different experience on top of the H2O. I took my first step up to the ice and immediately had to grab the rail. Both feet went straight out and I held to the wall to keep from doing the splits. After going around the rink once clinging to the rail, I was finally able to keep my feet under me. Then, came the time for lessons. We were summoned to the middle of the rink by the instructor. I thought, there is no way, I’m letting go of this rail, but the point of lessons is to learn to skate, not hang on the wall, right? So, wibbly, wobbly, splatting a couple of times, I made my way to the middle of the rink. We learned to push and glide. My legs were not strong enough to do that, so I kind of just took little baby steps using the toe stop. By the end of the lessons, I had begun to notice other skaters, who had been there, but in my fear and fight to stay upright I never really noticed except to hope they didn’t skate over me with those knives on their feet. There were some kids who had really cool skates with sharper blades and no toe stops, who could skate frontwards and backwards really fast and spray ice when they stopped. There were some others who could spin and twirl and dance while they skated. At one point, after the lesson, the music that was piped in over loud speakers stopped and a voice said, “please, reverse directions!” In one way this was terrible, because my body had just started to figure out how to go this way, and yet in another way it was a great relief, because my muscles on the other side could give my fatigued legs, ankles and hips a break. Then, later the voice came back and said, “please, clear the ice.” I was petrified because I was far from the ice exit, but with lots of little steps and some pulling on the rail with my arms I finally made it off the ice. I was glad to have a cup of warm hot chocolate and my mother was glad to wipe my runny nose on a kleenex rather than me wiping it on my sleeves and little mittens. Looking at the rink through the glass doors, I noticed a large vehicle that was driving on the ice. This magical machine drove over the ice and the ice became shiny and flat and all the kicked up ice shavings from “hockey stops,” “ice spins,” “toe stops,” and divots from crashes and carvings from the foot mounted axe blades instantly disappeared and the ice was restored to its glasslike, glisteny, smoothness. Watching this “Zamboni” became one of the highlights of my trips to the Ice Chalet, partly because my skating skills never really improved enough to play hockey or do cool dances like those who had skated since exiting the womb (affectionately known as rink rats) or had some natural skill and ability, and partly because it was so cool to see such a satisfying instant transformation of messed up, scarred, divot filled ice to clean, smooth, beautiful ice with a pass or two of the Zamboni.

When Jesus was about to begin His ministry, John the Baptist was preaching and preparing the hearts of everyone who would listen for the arrival of the Messiah. The famous gospel-writing physician, Luke, reminds everyone of the words of the prophet Isaiah from 700 years before about the coming of John who would be announcing the Christ. He talked about the rough places becoming smooth and mountains and valleys being made level. John was kinda like a human Zamboni that allowed people to have a clear, straight, unscarred, undivoted, path to a relationship with Jesus. He would call them to repentance, to do a “hockey stop” and reverse directions, to turn back toward God. Luke says, “Then John went from place to place on both sides of the Jordan River, preaching that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. Isaiah had spoken of John when he said,“He is a voice shouting in the wilderness,‘Prepare the way for the LORD’s coming! Clear the road for him! The valleys will be filled, and the mountains and hills made level. The curves will be straightened, and the rough places made smooth. And then all people will see the salvation sent from God.’” Luke 3:3-6 NLV. At just the right time Jesus came. He was greater than John the (Zamboni) Baptist, because He smooths over our broken relationship with God. He takes away our wounds and emotional hurts, removes mountains of sin, and redeems our twisted ways. He not only changes our human lives, He makes us brand new spiritually and gives us new life! The chasm between us and God was filled with Jesus who made a Way for us to have a renewed, healthy, real relationship with God. The scars from living in this harsh world can be healed. When we are experiencing a rough spot and headed the wrong way, we gotta, “reverse directions,” that’s repentance, we turn around and go toward God instead of away from Him. If we don’t exit the ice for a little while and let God renew us, we will only make more scars and divots and have more crashes. We need to let Jesus clear the way for us, heal our scars, replace our divots, and renew our rough places. Our salvation comes from Christ, He makes all things actually really new, rather than just smoothing them over with a veneer.

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!