For a big chunk of this morning, the we lost electricity all over the building. The only lights around most of the preschool were the glowing exit signs (I think the Fire Marshal would be very happy to see them all working). So you know what the preschool did? They just kept doing their thing. They played and learned and had fun together all by phone flashlights and near windows, and sometimes, yeah, just in the dark. They didn’t stop being who they were because of something outside their control.
Ephesians 1 reminds us that we are God’s children. It says that in him we have redemption, forgiveness, grace, inheritance, salvation, and a mark of the seal of his promise. We’re given all this so that we might live for the praise of his glory. I’m grateful to serve a God who is the same when everything else is different, and thankful that we find our own identity not from any external force, but from the God of the universe who chooses to dwell within us.
Keep doing your thing.
Month: October 2020
Sitting, Waiting Wishing
At a (virtual) conference I’m attending this week, I got to hear Jo Saxton talk about waiting; how lately we all have moments when we’re just waiting for things to go back to normal. I hear the word “wait” and tend to think of some Jack Johnson lyrics, where he seems to be in the midst of a situation that has no chance of changing soon. And yet Jo used the example of Ezekiel, who was commissioned a watchman. And a watching isn’t just sitting, waiting, wishing, in a bored, relaxed, stupor. She pointed out that a watchman had to be alert, ready to announce the presence of friends or foes. The Hebrew word used to describe Ezekiel’s job means “to peer into the distance.” It’s not so much a passive waiting, but an active searching. Are we waiting for things to go back to what’s familiar? Or are we peering into the distance toward God’s next move?
Counting Days
Today is the anniversary of the start of the Gregorian Calendar. In 1582, after Pope Gregory XIII declared the switch, Thursday October 4 was followed by Friday, Oct 15. He thought it was important to make the civil calendar of the Papal States and the religious calendar of the Catholic church match up with what actually happens around us in God’s creation (the Julian calendar assumed a year lasted 365.25 days. The Gregorian calendar gets us closer to the reality of about 265.2422 days that it takes the Earth to revolve around the Sun). Gregory was doing in a literal sense what the Psalmist asked God for help doing, and learning to count his days with wisdom.
Not everybody got on board though. Here in the Americas, as well as in England, the calendar didn’t change until 1752. After waiting 170 years, they had to skip another entire day and move 11 days forward in the calendar instead of 10. Change gets harder the longer we resist it. But sometimes there are perks to changing. And to numbering our days. John Wesley, founder of Methodism, lived during the time that England switched calendars, and now we celebrate two birthdays for him. So may you be wise. May you be ready to change when God asks it of you. May you make your days count. And may you celebrate twice as much.
Yapa
There is a Spanish word that usually gets translated as “tip” (as in leaving the waiter a good tip), but which we use in Ecuador almost exclusively the way English speakers would say “a free gift.” It’s commonly something a business uses in their marketing. “Buy a refrigerator and we’ll throw in a toaster. It’s a yapa.”
Yapas are also sometimes an extra piece of bread in your order, they way we’d call it a “baker’s dozen.” But people are so used to this expression, it can be anything you get as a bonus or a surprise. Samples at the grocery store? Yapa! Onion ring in your fries? Yapa! Mysterious leftover parts when you’re done constructing that IKEA furniture? Yapas! I hadn’t thought about this concept for a while, until I had one of those extra-things-in-my-bag experience at a fast food place this week. I pulled out the unexpected item and didn’t think “aw, man, how else have they messed up my order?” (the way I probably once would have reacted), I just surprised myself a little and said “Una yapa!”
Jesus was constantly telling people to look at things differently. Even in our very out-of-the-ordinary scripture lesson for this Sunday, he tells people “you judge-y guys want to chuck me aside, but now look how big and bad I am” (that’s from the Danny Peck Translation). He was unexpected, but in the best way. May we recognize Jesus when he shows up in our lives. And may we excitedly say “una yapa!”