Tuesday, April 5, 2022 (click here to read today’s scriptures)
Look, in the sky, it’s a bird! It’s a plane!
What does it take to get our eyes turned toward heaven?
Make a seraph and mount it on a pole, and whoever looks at it after being bitten by the serpents, they shall live.
That worked for Moses and his bunch of half-crazed, hungry, thirsty, worn-out children of Israel. During our worldwide pandemic, we didn’t try it. We looked down instead, into microscopes, and across into faces shielded by masks. At least we could see each other’s eyes, some sad, some scared, some laughing, some downcast … but what would have been wrong with looking up toward heaven?
O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you. Hide not your face from me in the day of my distress. And the Lord looked down from his holy height, from heaven he beheld the earth. He heard the groaning of the prisoners, and released those doomed to die. O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you.
The parking lot at Brushy Creek north of Austin was packed on Sunday afternoon. 85 sunny, breezy, springtime degrees, picnic baskets everywhere, and a sky full of kites. But we didn’t come for a picnic and we left our kite at home. We came for the bluebonnets! And they were everywhere.
Texas bluebonnets are beautiful blue flowers that blanket roadsides and assure us that spring is really here. Of course they are the state flower, and we have towels and mugs and who knows what else with blue bonnets painted or printed on them. We found a bare spot in one of the fields and took some family pictures. The sun was too bright, so the pictures weren’t great, but we’ll try again. Maybe even tomorrow.
Reading today’s scriptures about looking up … I want to get our kite and fly it! All those colors, all those shapes everywhere at Brushy Creek brought us so much joy. Look up, look up, look up!
Of course looking up at a snake statue when you’re dying is another thing altogether. And then, of course, there is Jesus on his cross.
When you lift up the Son of Man, you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone.
The week we call Jesus’ Passion Week is coming, after only a few days left in Lent. Watching the kites, I thought of looking up from the foot of Calvary, through the dust, at the three crosses sharp against the sky. There is Jesus, dying thirsty and nearly alone in the hot sun. His mother is there, and a few others. The crowds have faded away. Buzzards circle overhead, waiting.
Jesus said to them, “You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not. And where I am going, you cannot come.”
If I look up too long, I get a kink in my neck. But how can I follow Jesus if I can’t even find him in the sky. That’s not a bird, or a plane, or Superman. That’s Jesus on the cross, that’s Jesus carefully being lifted down, and taken away to his burial cave.
Mysteries unfold these next two weeks that change history, restore the Kingdom of God, and I want to watch and be glad.
(Numbers 21, Psalm 102, John 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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