Up the Sunbeam

-- It's no secret around here that I love to take pictures, although you might not know it by the infrequency of my photo excursions since I started school. How I miss heading out with my camera to capture whatever my eye is falling in love with wherever I happen to be! The unique beauty in a moment can be what lyricist, Alan Jay Lerner once described as "a fleeting wisp of glory"  (1960)  (C.S. Lewis would have liked that line). It may not even last as long as it takes for the earth to turn one degree of its rotation--the light moves, shadows change, and everything is different in only minutes, even seconds. As amazing a gift as memory is, it walks a delicate dance of deciding what to remember and what to forget . The choices it makes about what it should and shouldn't retain don't always match my wishes . . . and so I take pictures. Without pictures to remember what something really looked like, we lose details, we remember only in pieces.       ...

-- If I write the words, "On a hill far away . . . " what comes to mind? What about, "When peace like a river . . . ?" Try this one, "Mine eyes have seen the glory . . . " Chances are, at least for many of you, these line fragments will start a cascade of words and mental images that follow because the hymns they belong to are engraved deep in your hearts from much repetition. For those of us who grew up in churches where hymns were sung, these phrases are like keys that unlock whole worlds within them; we can scarcely hear the opening phrase without the rest of the hymn springing to life in our memories. Jesus may have been doing the very same thing in this familiar passage: “ From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land.  About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice,  'Eli, Eli,  lema sabachthani?'  (which means  'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' ). ”   Matthew 27:45-46...

-- I can feel my own spine lengthen and stretch in empathic connection with the waves as they rise, and rise, tension building almost to breaking, until they finally arch their backs in defiant determination just before they commit to the forward, crashing, headlong fall into the waiting shoreline. Whatever sand and rocks await them, the water will both surrender and subdue. What is left of the mighty wave when the rocks are done with it? What is sand, but stone pounded fine by crashing waves? On the same day these giant waves were joyously galloping to shore, risking surrender to subdue, Drummer Boy set out for some beach combing. No matter that his age names him adult, when there is fun to be had on a wide open beach, he is a child at play, imagining all manner of adventures. I think this particular day he was caught somewhere between shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe and an episode of Man vs. Wild where he and Bear Grylls would be in full survival mode, needing to find shelter to st...

-- That's a funny title, I know. Good - Bad High - Low Light - Dark Up - Down Victory - Defeat Success - Failure Honor - Disgrace Glory - Shame I think it's safe to say that these pairs of words are polar opposites. There is kind of a "never the twain shall meet" quality about each combination. These are "one or the other" propositions--you can't have both, at least not simultaneously . . . or so we think. As a lover of words, I have always enjoyed oxymorons--those quirky little figures of speech that carry contradiction like cargo--"jumbo shrimp," "act natural," "same difference," or "alone together." The word oxymoron is an oxymoron itself, meaning "sharply dull." Well, I think Jesus was a living oxymoron. He was God incarnate who left His home in HEAVEN and came to EARTH for one purpose--He said that purpose was to be lifted up. "But I, when I am lifted up from the ear...

-- Up and down . . . round and round . . . shoppers search and sift. Hustle, hurry . . . go, go, go . . . find the perfect gift! In all the scurrying activity of Christmas shopping, it's so easy to forget what it's all about. It's so easy to get stressed and grumpy, strained and out of sorts. Your heart is in the right place, but if you're at all like me, before it's all done, your head is throbbing! I pray for each of us this Christmas that we will not do one single solitary thing that isn't a pure outflow of joy and celebration and gratitude for our great Giver-God who has already given the absolute perfect Gift that could ever be given in His Son Jesus. Every gift we ever give should be because He gave. Every song we ever sing should be because He lives. Every light on every house glows the Light of the World. Every tree we ever decorate whispers both rough-hewn manger and old rugged cross. I pray that we won't get stuck on c...