Like a fire
Like a fire there appeared the prophet Elijah whose words were as a flaming furnace. How awesome are you, Elijah, in your wondrous deeds! You were taken aloft in a whirlwind of fire, in a chariot with fiery horses. Blessed is he who shall have seen you, Elijah, and who falls asleep in your friendship. – From Sirach 48
The stories of Elijah unveil a bipolar whirlwind of wild words and deep silence, loving sacrifice and righteous murder. He is hated, he is loved. And within his breast his heart beats for God even as his mind doubts it all. His capacity for self-pity is unmatched, but God called him and God carried him and God took him home. Riding on a fiery chariot no less.
What’s it like for a man who lived like that … to die? To settle into a heavenly rocking chair and finally have time to take a deep breath? Grandpa Brummer had a big rocking chair, made for the big man he was. I sat in his lap and he read me stories. Mom loved how he read Lambs’ Tales of Shakespeare to his daughters. She still has the precious, dog-eared copy he read from. I feel happy too when she holds it to her chest.
I don’t know what Grandpa read to me, or how he smelled, so close up like that. I must have noticed, but I don’t remember. I do remember how much I loved him. He pulled me to and fro in a red wagon just my size. He had to stoop down a little to pull it, because he was very tall.
If the story’s true, his dad drowned drunk face down in a ditch not far from home, a farm north of Lincoln. This tragedy did not derail the hopes and dreams of the Brummer kids. One of them, my aunt Dena, never married but traveled around the world. She opened her home near Washington DC first to my mother and aunt, and then to John, Mary Kay and I. Once she took me to see The Merry Wives of Windsor, performed in the outdoor Shakespeare theater on the Washington Monument lawn.
My grandpa would have been a pharmacist; that’s what he loved. School cost too much, so instead he farmed, and he farmed during the depression, the worst time of all to be a farmer. But he never stopped reading, and his daughters never stopped reading either. And neither have I. There’s a blessing.
So when I think of Elijah, I don’t think of fire and brimstone. I think of the rocking chair. “Blessed is he who has seen you, and who falls asleep in your friendship.” Rock-a-bye-Davie, in the tree top. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.” That sweet lullaby ends a little crazy, with baby crashing to the ground.
Turn that story off. I’ll just sit in Grandpa Elijah’s arms, feel him rock my soul, and fall asleep.
Friends are friends forever.
Thank you for the story of the Garden of Eden, Lord. I need to know that the place you made for us is fresh and whole and beautiful and clean. Because the place we’ve made for ourselves is not. Harsh things happen. People hate each other and refuse to heal. So Elijah’s life, like all our lives, piles high with contradiction. Let him rock his way to the bosom of Abraham, let us rock there too. Know where we came from, imagine where we’re going and fall asleep in your friendship.
 http://www.davesandel.net/category/advent-and-christmas-devotions-2018/
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archive.php?year=2018
