Saturday in the Octave of Easter, April 23, 2022Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
If this isn’t the Garden of Eden, I don’t know what is
After threatening them further, the priests released Peter and John, on account of the people who were all praising God for what had happened. There was no way to punish them.
The psalm that follows sings:
I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me.
Jesus had told his disciples, “Don’t worry about what you should say when you are arrested. The Holy Spirit will give you words to speak.”
Whether it is right in the sight of God for us to obey you rather than God, you be the judges. It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.
Those are Holy Spirit words, all right. The priests were rendered mute. For the moment, anyway.
Perhaps Peter and John expected an eventual backlash. But it did not matter. Thousands of their countrymen were believing in Jesus, and baptisms must have been happening in every spring and brook and trough and sink in Jerusalem. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I baptize YOU.
I shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord. I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me and have been my savior.
Today before I leave Urbana I will visit Japan House, sit and watch the falling cherry blossoms, nearly turned to springtime leaves. Sometimes the beauty of our world crushes me between its fingers like basil, or rosemary, or mint, and all the world within me and without lifts its sweet scent up to heaven.
Yesterday I had unexpected rests, when people couldn’t come, or got busy and it got late, when extended family needed a trip to the ER … so it goes. I took two naps, I listened to my Commissario Brunetti book, Death in a Strange Land. I stepped outside and felt the humid heat and stepped back in.
Two days ago the air was sweet and full of the smells of spring, but today it was top-heavy. Marc mowed the grass before the air changed, so much the better. Today the grass is as bright green as I can imagine. My friend Van said, “If central Illinois isn’t the Garden of Eden, then I don’t know where is.” The grass, bright green, framed by red and yellow tulips, a few daffodils, makes Eden less far off, less gone forever. When I can smell the grass and see it green, and feel its springtime life between my fingers, even taste its sweetness, Eden seems near. Listen for it now.
This is the gate of the Lord, and the just shall enter it. I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me and been my savior.
I listen to parents and child struggle to find a common language, and I don’t know how to help. Are we all being serious here? How much masquerade, just so I can go back to my old ways and not fight to create new ones?
My friend sat in one chair and spoke to Jesus. She changed chairs then, and Jesus said to her, “You are mine.”
None of us parents, children, teachers, students, have any need for fear. It will be all right. Time will move from chronos to Kairos, and we will stretch out our fingers to touch heaven, and Jesus will say, “You are mine.”
I will sit in my chair and speak to Jesus, and I will sit in Jesus’ chair and Jesus will speak to me. There is no hurry. I have more than enough. Jesus words whisper in my ear, “You are mine.”
Then Jesus said to them, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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