Saturday, September 14, 2024
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
 A good time not far from home
For God so loved the world.
John 3:16 surely ranks as the most famous bible verse. It’s been etched into my mind since I was six. Christmas pageants filled our minds with Jesus (along with sugarplums) but “For God so loved the world …” opened the doors of heaven to the good Lutheran children, red and yellow, black and white, of Lincoln, Illinois.
He gave his only begotten son, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.
See, what’d I tell ya?
At the name of Jesus every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Thus we young boys and girls swung into the rest of life free to be free, knowing how close God was and how close heaven, gliding along in Jesus’ hovercraft, carrying us along, learning to be in the world but not of it (John 17).
Miles and Jasper are learning the same verses and gliding along themselves, knowing how close Jesus is. And on Fridays we get to be there to remind them.
The boys had lunch with us at Wingstop yesterday, with the 1930s pre-jet mural of wide wings hovering over us, avoiding all the spicy coverings, eating lots of their famous fresh cut fries, and generally having a good time with food that might not be all that good for us but tasted like it was. We smeared ketchup on the table but wiped it up, and even found a wet cloth and wiped the table clean. Miles and Jasper had mixed drinks (we used to call them kamakazies at camp). Coke and Fruit punch, and the like.
We spent a couple hours at the Austin Aquarium, nothing like Shedd Aquarium, but … still. Here you can touch almost everything. We used tokens to buy krill to feed the sting rays, whose dark coats feel like wet leather. Their mouths are on the undersides of their bodies, so they turn sideways and almost upside down to eat the little creatures we fed them. This aquarium includes plenty of ground animals too: a sloth and several kinds of lemurs and parakeets and parrots and pythons, along with four wallabies from Australia and Chinese pheasants more colorful than the peacocks at the park downtown.
We settled down for awhile watching the sharks, which famously DO NOT bite many humans, and DO have large brains rather than the walnut brains they are reputed to have. Still we didn’t feed them, and we didn’t put our hands deep in the water.
We also didn’t tempt the reticulated python from its endless sleep. Leaving well enough alone. Let Moses do the serpent lifting.
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
(Numbers 21, Psalm 78, Philippians 2, John 3)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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