Good Stuff/19 on 19
Aside from the weirdness of not attending church for, I believe, the first time in nineteen months, if memory serves – which it occasionally does – we piled up a box of truffles for the family at The Chocolate Box. Dark chocolate, raspberry, and mint.
We don’t really shop much.
Babysitting aunts extraordinaire, Carrie and Rose, fixed up Puck with a bungee-trampoline jump at the mall while the Bear and I took a few extra hours to explore our home town. We drove the old Strecker Road under pre-Indian-autumn skies, passing unusual twists of countryside stitched over palaces, ramshackle gardens, and coves that should always live under gray skies.
“That is a pretty big fence,” the Bear noted one particular property line. “I wonder if they have dinosaurs.”
And some Lion’s Choice roast beef from the old Ominmax-Dad’s-dates-with-the-kids-days.
Back again, Dad and Rose were slap-tacking each other, catch-up on all the disasters and dialogues of church and the past three point five days… Linnea wanted to hit up Six Flags for the afternoon…
“What? So you can smell all the grease from the food wrappers on the ground?” Rose squawked.
“They have good stuff too…”
“Yeah, like those hot dogs that are probably giant rat legs that live under the Ferris wheel?”
Carrie-Bri surprised Mom with a giant pink riverboat play stage from her childhood in an eBay find down the road. Puck watched the Bear slam persimmons across the yard with an old baseball bat, and picked chunks of soft green sap out of the fallen limbs. Dad brought in pizzas and an incidental order of crazy bread.
Day complete.
Except…
Nine. teen. Innings.
22 guys.
For naught.
There’s always, always Tuesday.
Thought of the Day
I wonder sometimes why people [including myself] like “bad things”.
And by “bad”, I’m equating it with the potential for bad outcomes. The idea of imminent destruction, danger or possibility thereof, the adrenaline rush of maybe gloriously kicking the can in the process of some devilish adventure… Why do we love pirate lore, Viking legends, Roman sea battles, tornados and hurricanes, etc. and etc.
Why do they entertain, why do they chill the blood in an intriguing way? Why do we find it ok to enjoy gladiator battles on the big screen or the tale of the 1930’s orphan who sells matches on the street corner in an ice storm to buy a slice of bread or a half-rotten potato for her Christmas dinner? [I’m sure there’s a film or book about that someplace.]
So I may be reaching here, but, I think part of it is “simply” because we like to be saved.
We like the idea of being saved.
Any “good person” being saved.
After all, far fewer people would actually enjoy the real “badness” that resulted from piratical pillaging, gladiator guts-splitting, or a child freezing to death on the street before the elderly widowed millionaire with lavender hair adopts her. We – generally humanly speaking – prefer the story of how the good guys actually win over the bad guys, how good things happen to “good people”, how innocence is rescued from evil.
I think it’s the same way with the Creator rescuing His creation.
I hear people ask that question – “Why couldn’t God just plunk us in Heaven from the start? Why did we have to come down here and live through horrible things, and sin, and fight sin, and forget to fight sin, and actively employ ourselves in sin? Why couldn’t we just be made perfect?” [Or something like that.]
But I really honestly believe that we just wouldn’t be able to appreciate salvation at the same level if we had never experienced that “danger”. Even with holy brains dripping in perfection, I don’t think our level of understanding and gratitude would have reached the same level. I mean, wouldn’t you be just a little more enthralled with life after the superhero whisks you away from the mouth of the boiling volcano ringed by a moat of crocodiles, piranha, and cannibals?
I don’t know.
It’s just another perspective on salvation.