When we met Mary and Charles they had some vocabulary specific to the western Pennsylvania region. They used the word yins for the second person plural, the way a Texan would say y’all or a Parisian would say vous.
I’m-gonna-beat-yins-to-the-house! She would yell joyfully, running up the small hill to the porch.
Eventually she lost the yins
But I am praying that she did
Beat us to the House
Genesis 12:13 KJV
[13] Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee.
Modern translation–I would rather live without you than die for you
It is as though Abram knew he must treat his soul like a kidnapped child–my soul must live, sister, let my soul live.
It feels like chattel to me, the moment Abram exchanges his wife for his alleged soul. We are all cowards sometimes, I know this, but it is amazing that this guy is the guy by which all redemption covenants are measured and paid.
For what good does it do for a man to
Gain the whole world and lose his own
Soul?
God gets her back
Because God never breaks a promise
When Mary talks now on the Fisher-Price phone of loss, she speaks with a five year old’s falsetto. She is breezy, upbeat even, and we exchange pleasantries through the medium of her daughter’s voice.
Mary, the girls have your laugh, I try to tell her before the line cuts off. Mary, I always wanted to be your real mom, I tell her before the line clicks off. Mary, that last day haunts me. The girls talk as though you still have the giant carnival unicorn, as though you tucked it under your arm and carried it right through
The earth will soon dissolve like snow/The sun forebear to shine/But God who called me here below/will be forever mine
Little One says
Is mommy sleeping in heaven?
No, I say
She is wide awake
Dancing and singing
I wish I were in heaven
Little One says
No, not yet dear
Let us sing and dance together as though this were the porch and the lights from the house were burning bright
Stay with me here on the porch for awhile
We will dance and sing out
grief and hope together until
These ancient gates open wide
Daniel 10:12-14 KJV
[12] Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. [13] But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia. [14] Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days.
We have so misunderstood and utterly misrepresented
What angels do
Who they are
Or how they might appear
(While surely they might be anyone–
Women, children, the dispossessed)
They stand their ground
Fight for us
Maybe when it would seem
We are otherwise entirely
Abandoned
I have friend who is an aficionado of romance. I am too old for that stuff myself, but I tell her that
Jesus is like the nerdy guy who likes you at the lunchroom table you should sit at but what will the cool kids think?
Yep. I am way past cool kids and would argue that if that were a thing, the guy who pays it all for us would have to be the coolest one of us all
But he is ok being
The nerdy guy who
Sends us love songs
All the time
It is scary not being able to breath properly. It looks like you have Covid lung the doctor said, congestive heart failure…
My husband told my daughters what pills to give me and when, bypassing me entirely because the lack of oxygen meant fatigue and fuzzy thinking
I had put my soul at the center of this. Dying was just a space in my peripheral vision, something that was going to be inevitable at the rate I was going.
I tried to sing these songs. Eventually I had to just sit in their presence while others sang.
I talked to Jesus about the pain and paper sack lungs. He told me he took the true agony of a pair of dying lungs so that I could be given
More time, heaven after
When I began to think I would actually live a little longer, I was still afraid to take it for granted
I had to talk myself into the river. Tell myself I could ease in, keep your head above water
When I could go under
Hold my breath
Swim again
I told Jesus I would never tell the story without full acknowledgement
He healed me. He gave me back my life at his own deep expense
His lungs for mine
Matthew 25:35-39 KJV
[35] For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: [36] Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. [37] Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee ? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? [38] When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee ? [39] Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
The test of the I-was-es:
Seeing Jesus in all our weakness and need
Hey Little One,
I will fight for you
There is a story Luke tells about Joseph and Mary assuming somehow that Jesus was in their large family group as they returned from Jerusalem the year he was 12. It is the last chronological reference to Joseph. It raises legitimate questions about either their parenting or the point at which a boy was considered an independent in their culture. Both probably.
But more than that it was a handful of days where the Messiah was the Messiah in full public views. He said and did and was who he always was and always would be. Luke writes that the people he interacted with acknowledged his mastery of the subject at hand.
Why is this story here? Why aren’t there a million others? I want to know what Jesus ate for breakfast every day, not to mention what he said those days, years before his public ministry.
And I want to know more about his interlocutors. What did they gather from their
Brief encounter with the Philosopher King?
Carrying Light 