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!
