Tuesday, July 2, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Crossing the sea in a small boat
Marc and I are playing golf today. 18 holes from a cart is far easier, I found out, than nine par 3 holes walking. On Saturday Chris and Jack invited me to play with them, we three generations, walking around the grass beside Lake of the Woods on a lovely day. I did some tottering and stumbling during the last three holes, though, and it felt like the sun just got hotter and hotter.
I think today will be more re-creative. No hurry, just be happy. If I can manage to hit the ball forward, that’s a good thing. Enough. Andi’s golf teacher told her that years ago, and I am grateful now for this happy memory. Everyone is smiling.
Yesterday my friend Chris and I had lunch with our mentor Mary Lou. Mary Lou is 92, leads our centering prayer group, and Chris is 43, the same age as our son. He loves his role in neuroscience research at Beckman Institute, where UIUC’s disciplines intersect and interact.
Mary Lou tells us stories from days when she was a hospice volunteer, which she treasured then and treasures now even more. Many people talk long and hard about their illnesses and ailments when they get older. Mary Lou does not. She talked yesterday about the joy of praying for the dying, wiping their foreheads with a cool cloth, and holding their hands. Never any hurry. Not any more.
Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was swamped by waves, and Jesus was asleep.
Jesus might have slept through the whole thing … but we don’t know that version of the story. The disciples woke him up, frightened unto death.
And he got up. Jesus rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.
How often does this need to happen, before instinctive fear and panic of impending doom fades away? Before I can continue to breathe deep and face the front, even when there be dragons? So I can lie down and sleep, because the Lord lets me dwell in safety?
Why are you terrified, O ye of little faith?
Mary Lou evinces no self-pity. She says, “I love my life. Still, I’ve been here long enough I think.”
I imagine Jesus said something like that too, somewhere along the Way. The three of us loved our time together yesterday very much, sitting around a small table at Applebee’s, enjoying each other’s smiles, looking into each other’s eyes.
The disciples were amazed and said, “What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and sea obey?”
It was good to be in the boat together, the three of us, looking out for lightning, listening for thunder, waiting on God, laughing a little and sharing a prayer.
(Amos 3, Psalm 5, Psalm 130, Matthew 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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