Rapture Dream

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In the dream I am younger, foolish, or maybe just in an alternate timeline. I am in college and for the first few weeks of the semester I keep missing a class because of some sort of social group attached to another class.

The repeated absences from the business economics class worry me, weigh on my mind, but I am actively choosing the warm, group project participation over a class I have registered for but have never attended. The idea of contacting the professor never enters my mind.

Finally, I decide I must go.

As I walk to the neglected business economics course, I see the group games people wrapping up a session. They are energized and talking to each other while I trudge off to face the uncomfortable unknown.

As I walk, I worry. Will I be able to catch up? What assignments have they completed? Will the professor have noticed I am missing? My concerns fill my mind.

Just outside the room, I can hear the professor tell the class to get out their graphing calculators—there is a test today!

I feel totally unprepared. No graphing calculator, I rifle through a bin to find scratch paper for a test as my heart sinks.

I walk into the room and approach the professor, who seems to know who I am despite my habitual truancy. I begin to try to explain myself—

“Hello, I am registered for this class…”

He cuts me off, sternly—

“Not as of today you are not.”

I am flooded with relief, but still worried. Do I need to confirm with the registrar that I have been dropped from the course? Will there be an academic penalty? Why have I paid for a course I did not attend?

Walking back, puzzling over the purloined business economics class, I see my fellow students engaging in a group activity.

They are arranging packaged snacks like sticky buns, coffee cakes, and Twinkies on folding tables so that an unseen cohort can sample them.

The contrast is stark. A minority group of students is facing a rigorous test, while most appear to be setting out and sampling junk food.

My last thought before the dream is over—

This is college? How strange.

Wish v. Pray

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I wish there were a salve that I could pour out over the avenue pietà

Blown glass overflown with

Remedy made of light

An unspooling of the reckless myopia that led to the senseless tragedy

The beloved returned home

Wish.

V. Prayer—

The fragile vessel, the mind, the heart, the words spilled out to the God of Time and Propitiation

I don’t care if I don’t understand the words and can’t see the light

He will come back

Scoop up the Beloved

Call us Home

Washed Ashore

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I have to have written about this before—

I once knew a young, smart-but-also-foolish lifeguard

Who strove to find meaning in a fortune cookie when he had

A relentless friend who constantly tried to get him to

Fall in love with Jesus.

I have been puzzling about how to tell the story of God made into a baby made into a man made into a sacrifice for the sins of the world broken for us, breaking open hell, coming back to life, giving us our lives back.

There.

Here—

Is the bottle, washed ashore for you

Open it

And once you know it is true, put it in another bottle and

Send it out to sea.

Here I am, Adonai

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I know a man who is fighting to live in order to be there for his wife. His struggle, pain, and uncertainty are deeply courageous, but also scary.

When physics seems inexorable, then believing in the deus ex machina makes a person look pretty crazy..

But I am not talking about Aeschylus or even Plutarch, I am talking about Jesus.

He doesn’t need to save a weak plot with a contrived entrance, and he does very incisively predict his own return.

I want to “pray deeper.” I want to pray the way I swim, respirate, or walk up a hill.

I want to spend the time I have imploring God to do impossible things now and forever after.

I need to keep my eyes on Jesus. He is the God Who Saves.

57 Million People

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A few years ago I began a friendship with someone who was experiencing early signs of memory loss. My friendship with this person has been defining because

They retain their intelligence and personality even as the memory loss has progressed.

They are still deeply human, and their soul and spirit are not limited by the memory loss.

They are well-looked after by amazing people, but life feels fragile and they express that fragility with both pathos and Grace.

I do not like the term dementia. It has a whiff of pejorative madness. I try to maintain the common use of the primary symptom—memory loss, because we need a better word for what happens when anyone loses memory because of the multiple reasons any person can lose their memory. There is not one cause, and there should be care taken about “lumping” 57 million people together.

Please pray for all of us—all the humans, but please consider praying specifically for the 57 million humans who have memory loss.

God loves us all and nothing can stop him from speaking to each of us—even if the words might seem to evanesce in the memory.

The soul of Man lives forever

And the Son of Man has promised he will

Keep that which we give to him against That Day—or as my friend would add—“on all the others as well.“

Through the side door

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I spent more than a few minutes trying to find the healthiest food choices in a gas station convenience store. It took some time and the eventual choices were the best I could do—pistachios, pretzels, Chex mix and two packs of chicken salad tins with crackers.

The cashier was very nice. He told me that I should dance, then told me that yesterday was “National Brown Liquor Day,” and that I should buy some liquor from the store and then buy a soda to “really be happy.”

I demurred.

Today I looked it up—

Either he was bad with dates or he lied to me!

National Brown Liquor Day?

I don’t think so. But I should dance

Because God has given us the New Wine of the Holy Spirit.

On the good days, the bad days, and the days when the world feels food-deserty.

Jesus is here

Let’s dance!

Mixtape to Mars and the freckles in our eyes

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I have long held the opinion that if a disheveled, crazed woman accosted you in the grocery store parking lot with a lottery ticket, you would probably still check the nightly numbers for a winner

I could be wrong but

Jesus is coming back soon and we don’t have

Time for trips to hostile planets or other vainglorious pursuits when it is enough to ask

What is on the mixtape Jesus has handed us

In the parking lot of this planet

Seconds before the end of

All remaining

“pretty girl discounts”

Sign Posts

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I have loved CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia for over half a century (yes, I am old).

Lately, I have been particularly drawn to certain narrative elements of The Silver Chair.

The conditions of the enchantment of the Prince and Aslan’s signs—

How does a person wake up from a deadly delusion? How do the people around them help to “break the enchantment?”

And what are the signs we begin to forget in the castle of our besetting giants?

Jesus gives us all we need to navigate through the end of the world or an ordinary Tuesday.

Know the signs

And know the wonders too.

Matthew 24:4-46 KJV
[4] And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. [5] For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. [6] And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. [7] For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. [8] All these are the beginning of sorrows. [9] Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. [10] And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. [11] And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. [12] And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. [13] But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. [14] And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. [15] When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) [16] Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains: [17] Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: [18] Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. [19] And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! [20] But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day: [21] For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. [22] And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened. [23] Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. [24] For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. [25] Behold, I have told you before. [26] Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. [27] For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. [28] For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. [29] Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: [30] And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. [31] And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. [32] Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: [33] So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. [34] Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. [35] Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. [36] But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. [37] But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. [38] For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, [39] And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. [40] Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. [41] Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. [42] Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. [43] But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. [44] Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. [45] Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? [46] Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.