Saturday May 6, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Riders up!
On the following sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord.
Margaret and I spent awhile yesterday shopping on Amazon for hats. The Kentucky Derby runs again today, 149 consecutive years since 1875. We found a perfect recipe for mint juleps (lots and lots of mint leaves).
But Grandma Dot (Margaret’s mom Dorothy) who gets us moving to choose a horse and hoot and holler while the race goes on for its two wild minutes, will be elsewhere. We expect her to be in the Beautiful City with the others “gathered to hear the word of the Lord.” However, with just a bit of imagination we can sit beside Dot, Kay and Heather in our Austin hideaway and shout together one more time. With a little more imagination we can invite my mom and her late beau Everett, who loved the horses, and we’ll have a full house. Might need to find some more mint!
The Jews found women of prominence and leading men of the city to stir up prosecution against Paul and Barnabas, who shook the dust from their feet and went on to Iconium from Antioch.
Four horses have been scratched from the race, one of which died on a practice run. Three other horses, not in the Derby, also died this week at Churchill Downs, and so investigations capture some of the headlines. One trainer has been suspended from his post. Still, on Friday the women wear pink and on Saturday, they wear red, orange, yellow and brown. At Louisville’s Brown Hotel “hot brown” will be served for breakfast, lunch and dinner as long as the roast turkey breasts hold out.
The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.
Last year my friend Thomas rode his bike in the Derby Tour de Lou, held a couple weeks before the horse race. He lives in Alabama, but that didn’t stop Thomas and his family from traveling 556 miles through Tennessee into Kentucky for the 100 K bicycle race, which took him through Churchill Downs itself.
All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation by our God. Sing joyfully to the Lord, all you lands! Break into song; sing praise.
Margaret’s a little hoarse for the horse race this year, but I hope she still stands at attention during “My Old Kentucky Home.” She is after all, a Kentucky native. Carly Pearce from Taylor Mill will sing the national anthem. And Patrick Mahomes, who is NOT from Kentucky (but Tyler, Texas is not that far), will holler, “Riders Up!”
There are controversies. There are distractions. There are debates and decisions made about all these very public parts of the race. Political correctness gets its due, as does tradition. And after it all comes the bugler’s Call to the Post, and the 19 unscratched horses stand restless in the starting gate.
Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.
I guess it’s a stretch, reading the lectionary for today and thinking about the horse race. And we haven’t even gotten to King Charles’ coronation. Often when I sit down to write, the world just outside our windows seems so bright and new. It’s interesting! Adventures within the Bible stories and all along the road reach out and invite us to live our lives as Jesus did, and maybe even get a taste of those “greater works” he mentions.
I would like to ask my mom and Margaret’s mom about this, because they too, like Jesus, have gone to the Father. I would love to hear what they’d have to say.
(Acts 13, Psalm 98, John 8, John 14)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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