Jesus as a Son - Lenten blog post #2

   His parents didn’t know what to think. “Son!” his mother said to him. “Why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been frantic, searching for you everywhere.”

   “But why did you need to search?” he asked. “Didn’t you realize that I would be here at the Temple, in my Father’s House?” But they didn’t understand what he meant. (Luke 2:48-50, Living Bible)

 The scene above takes place when Jesus is twelve years old. He had visited the temple with his parents, but He had remained behind when they left. They didn’t know what had happened to Him. (If I was Mary, I’d be thinking, “oh, no! I lost the Son of God.”)

 Jesus’s response to His mother seems disrespectful and harsh. As is His answer to Mary’s plea for help below.

    On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Now both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”  

   Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.”

   His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.” (John 2:1-5, New King James Version)

For the six Sundays until Easter, I’m writing about the different roles Jesus played. Not only was He the Son of God and our Savior, but He was a brother, a friend, a teacher, and as shown here, a son to earthly parents.

I always wonder about these verses. I think something is lost in translation, or we read a certain connotation into Jesus’s words. No Jewish child of that time would ever be disrespectful or less than 100% obedient to their parents. And of all children, Jesus would never break the fourth commandment (honor your mother and father).

If there is ever any doubt about what kind of a son Jesus was, picture the scene below. He is hanging on the cross, only minutes from dying, when He looks down and sees Mary grieving there. He knows He could leap from the cross and end her suffering, along with His own, but that wasn’t His heavenly Father’s plan. Instead, Jesus does the next best thing, He makes sure His mother will be taken care of.

   Standing near the cross were Jesus’ mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary (the wife of Clopas), and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside the disciple he loved, he said to her, “Dear woman, here is your son.” And he said to this disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from then on this disciple took her into his home. (John 19:25-27, New Living Translation)

I kind of think that Jesus is saying that not only would His mother be taken into someone’s home, but we’ll be taken into a home too. Which, of course, is our eternal home, heaven. 

This year’s theme for pictures is churches I’ve seen in my travels around the country. Today’s is the church at Central, Michigan, an abandoned mining town in the Upper Peninsula.

Here I am again

 I was going to title this “Yet Another Flashback Friday and COVID Update,” but I decided that was simply too long.

In addition to continuing to go through old pictures, scanning the decent ones, and pitching the bad ones, I’ve been working on my family tree—Dad’s side. Hence the pictures of one of his projects from back in the early 1980s.

My dad was born in Germany in 1915. World War I was ravaging Europe, and three years later, as the fighting continued, the Spanish Flu of 1918 reared its ugly head. More people died from that pandemic than from the war. Somehow, life went on, and my dad’s family welcomed another son that year, bringing the family up to three sons and three daughters.

I can’t imagine what their lives had been like. Dad never talked too much about his life in Germany. Sure, he was only nine when they immigrated to America, but he had a few memories he shared. His dad throwing him into the river to teach him to swim and how severe the poverty was for everyone.

I sure wished I had paid more attention and asked for more stories.

Hopefully, thanks in part to the internet – and maybe even this blog – our children and their children will remember the times we lived through in 2020 and 2021.

Not too much new on the pandemic front in my small town. The number of positive cases seems to be going down as the number of those having received the vaccine continues to go up. Our COVID shot clinic last Saturday went relatively smoothly; all our patients were appreciative and well-behaved. Though my hero’s cape is pretty threadbare, I was able to wear it for the entire nine-hour day. 

Wandering Around Wabasha

A few weeks ago, a friend and I visited another friend at her new home in Wabasha, Minnesota. Such a quaint little town! My friend had fallen in love with it a long time ago, and a year ago, she up and moved two hundred miles away to be where she felt called. How I admire her.

Resting on the Mississippi River banks, Wabasha is Minnesota's oldest city and longest continuously inhabited river town. It was first settled in 1826 and officially became a city in 1830.

Wabasha was a bustling town, with logging, shipping, flour milling, trading, and clamming. The discarded clam shells could be used to make buttons, which led to a booming button industry.   

The bridge over the Mississippi.

The historic Anderson House.

The hotel opened in 1856 and was Minnesota's oldest continuously operating inn west of the Mississippi River.

The hotel's restaurant was known for its Dutch cooking. The hotel itself was famous for the cats that could stay in the rooms with hotel guests for overnight companionship.

I'm sure the rest of the buildings in town have fascinating stories as well.

 

Who Is Jesus? Lenten blog post #1

    For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16, New International Version)

Ash Wednesday was a few days ago, marking the beginning of Lent. Each year I try to come up with a theme for the six Sundays leading up to Easter. I’ve had something in mind since the first of the year, but then yesterday morning, I came up with a totally different idea. Which is usually how I roll.

For me, Lent signifies a time to look at the life of Jesus and what both His life and death mean to me. This year I thought maybe it would be worthwhile to look at precisely who Jesus is. Yes, of course, He is the one and only Son of God, but He was also a son to Mary and Joseph, a brother, a friend, a teacher, and most importantly, our Savior.

Today, I’ll start by looking at what it means to be the one and only Son of God, or as the King James Version of the Bible states, “the only begotten Son of God.”

The original word in this verse was the Greek word monogenes, which in all our English translations of the Bible comes to read “only," "one and only," or "only begotten.” The word “begotten” means to be born or created. When non-believers see that word, they denounce Jesus as being part of the Triune God, saying that if He was created, then He hasn’t been around forever the way God has been, which is one way they try to rip apart the entire Christian faith.

Actually, the word monogenes has two definitions. 1) pertaining to being the only one of its kind within a specific relationship and 2) pertaining to being the only one of its kind or class, unique in kind. When used as an adjective, it can mean one of a kind or one and only. So I’m not sure where the old King James Version gets the word begotten. All I know is that I think it would be super cool to master the ancient Greek language, the language the Bible was originally written in, and not have to figure out which English translation is the most accurate. But that’s just me.

What this whole conversation boils down to is that Jesus is, was, and always will be the one and only, unique Son of God. With the Father and the Holy Spirit, they make up the Triune God.

Also, when I write a set of themed blog posts, I like to include pictures with one theme as well. This year, I am going with churches, far and wide, that I’ve seen in my travels. Today’s is a nearby church, the simple and very old Estonia Church in Gleason, twenty miles or so from where I live.

Flashback Friday and COVID19 Update

 I started scanning old pictures again last week. Which always makes me feel melancholy.

My sister Pat and I were on one of our fabulous camping trips to the UP. It was the week of July 15, because we stopped somewhere so I could buy her an ice cream cone for her birthday. Then one evening, as we were strolling along Lake Superior, she snapped this picture.

I wish I could say that she stole my camera and captured this moment, but it was staged. I told her I would look out over the lake as if I were lost in thought, and blah, blah, blah. But whether spontaneous or not, it never took either one of us any effort to look out across that huge body of water and imagine all the years of our lives floating there.

We never could have imagined that the length of her life would amount to a mere puddle.  

I never would have thought thirty-nine years ago that this picture – one of those artsy ones I snapped all the time – would remind me more of the coronavirus than of a marigold. 

A week ago, I was all worked up about having side effects from my second COVID-19 vaccine. I didn’t have any sort of reaction at all. A bit of a sore arm and a headache, which I attribute more to the lack of sleep, in anticipation of the fever, chills and body aches which never happened.

The latest stress is the vaccine clinic we are hosting at my work this Saturday. It will be all hands on deck to efficiently and safely get those 170 patients in and out. And that number of patients is just a drop in the bucket compared to the lists of people in our area who still need the vaccine. I have no idea how they will all get vaccinated. I have no idea if it will make a difference in stopping COVID. I have no idea who that person is in the water.

Seems there’s more that I don’t know than that I do. I do know that I hope you all have a good weekend. Continue to be safe. Find what makes you happy. Chris 

Just a Spool of Thread

   “For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. (Matthew 6:8b, New King James Version)

Last weekend I was trying to finish sewing a Christmas present (I know, I’m late by almost two months). I had looked at my thread before I ran to town on Friday and realized I wasn’t going to have quite enough. The store I went in was out of the color blue I needed, and I just didn’t want to run all over town looking for it, so I hoped for the best.

As I was coming down the home stretch, sewing that final seam, I watched the thread spinning away, thinking maybe I would have just enough. When the bobbin ran out. I was like – well, that just figures.

For a couple years, since I’ve really started to embrace sewing, I’ve been buying almost as much thread as fabric. And putting them all in their neat little rows in the two plastic boxes I bought just for that purpose.  

But before I had those boxes, I used a small tackle box for my sewing supplies. It dawned on me that, maybe, just maybe I might have a spool of blue thread in there.

I dug out that old box, and sure enough, along with a few spools of odd-ball specialty threads, sat one spool of bright blue thread.

It seems so dumb, sometimes. I mean, God has got so many other more important things to do. He really does. I should be just a blip on His radar, and the blanket I was sewing for a Christmas present could surely wait another week or two until I could get to Walmart. Yet, there it was, an old spool of thread I had forever, which was the exact color I needed.

Coincidence? That’s what some people would say. Or maybe, with so much craziness going on in this world, I am grasping at another bit of hope in a loving God. Or some would say that.

For me, I am convinced that God put that spool of thread in my old tackle box to remind me that no matter how big or how small my problem, He has got it covered.

And I fell on my knees right then and there last Sunday and prayed something like:

Lord, Father in heaven, You are there for me always and forever. I may feel surrounded by sadness and confusion, I feel like so much is weighing me down. But You have got it all taken care of. If You can give me a simple spool of thread, You can – and You do – answer all of my prayers. Thank You so much for letting me be Your child. Amen.  

Be a hero another day

On Monday, I get my second COVID vaccine. I’m not going to lie – I’m dreading it like I’ve dreaded few things before in my entire life.

Yesterday morning I read a pretty good article about this vaccine, and I should have saved it right away. I naturally thought I would easily find it again to maybe copy and paste (giving the author full credit) so that I wouldn’t have to write this whole explanation here. Alas, here I am, starting from scratch.

In my January 22 post, I already explained how this new vaccine works and how it’s different from the other vaccines we’ve received over the years. With my appointment for my second vaccine coming up so fast, this has all been on my mind. Obsessively so.

Any article you find on the vaccine will tell you that there can be side effects – fever, chills, body aches, fatigue, headaches, nausea, and, naturally, a sore arm. But they tell you that about a lot of things. You know? How when you get a new prescription, the handout says that this medication may cause diarrhea or constipation, fatigue or insomnia, excessive facial hair, baldness, shortness of breath, blindness, death. But everybody knows that those side effects are really rare (except for the patients who immediately call their doctors after reading that and refuse to take the med). Most of us know that the pharmaceutical companies have to print that stuff because one in four million test subjects experienced those reactions. We understand that these drugs are totally safe. And they are. Seriously.

And then, the COVID vaccine came along with its list of adverse reactions. And instead of one in a million people getting them, pretty much everyone I know who has had the vaccine has had some sort of negative response. And when they say fever, chills, body aches, fatigue, they mean those symptoms might knock you clean off your feet and curl you up in your bed under six down comforters for two days.  

Let me back up to explain the technology again.

When the first dose of the COVID vaccine is given, it is like a training dose. It’s training your body to recognize the coronavirus as an invader. If that first dose does its job, by the time you get your second dose, the body immediately realizes what’s going on and puts the immune system on high alert. When the immune system is high alert, it can trigger all those side effects listed as a way to fight this invader (or at least I assume that’s how it works; I’ve been searching the internet for twenty minutes now and couldn’t find any clarification on that).

But whatever happens, or why or how it happens, those fevers, chills, body aches, and fatigue – they could well take you out for a day or two. I just want to warn everyone. Especially when the younger population starts getting their vaccines. As we age, our immune systems slow down, which is why the elderly are more prone to illness. The good thing for us older folks with this vaccine is that our slower immune systems mean that this high alert response won’t be so pronounced, so we shouldn’t have such severe side effects. Or that’s sure what I’m hoping.

Bottom line – get the vaccine, both the first and second dose, when it's available to you. Have some Tylenol or ibuprofen on hand and take them as you need to. Make arrangements to take a day or two off of work after you get the second shot if you need to. Drink plenty of water. Don’t be a hero. Stay in bed if you need to. Or maybe just if you want to. You can be a hero another day.

Chris  

Oh, one more thing I just read. If you are due for your mammogram, you might want to wait until four weeks after your vaccine. All this immune response can show up as an immune response in your breasts, which could show up as something which happens when your breasts are defending themselves against cancer. You could get an alarming abnormal mammogram and need to have it repeated. 

To be loved and be lovable

   Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:37-39, New King James Version)

When I sat down to write this blog post last night, Hubby and I had just finished watching the movie “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Having no other solid ideas of what to write about, I thought I would just grab on to the philosophy of dear ol’ Mr. Rogers.

Here are some of his quotes I found online.

During a CNN interview. “I went into television because I hated it so, and I thought there’s some way of using this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen.” (Wouldn’t it be great if everyone on TV today believed this!)

On the Value of Life, which seems to be taken for granted by so many these days. “As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has–or ever will have–something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.”

On loving others, because isn’t that what life should really be about? “You know, I think everybody longs to be loved, and longs to know that he or she is lovable. And, consequently, the greatest thing that we can do is to help somebody know that they’re loved and capable of loving.”

Though he was an ordained Presbyterian minister, Mr. Rogers realized that the best way to teach people about the love of God was to live it. In this messed up world we live in today, people are turning away from religion for many reasons. But I am sure that one reason is that many of the Christian leaders we see in the media are doing anything but showing love for one another. (But that whole discussion would lead me right down a rabbit hole.) 

The movie “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” did come out just over a year ago, so it’s actually astonishing that I saw it already. (The only newly released movies I see are the comic book hero movies that Hubby has to watch.) Here’s the thing though, something I just found out when I was looking up facts on Fred Rogers. His wife, Joanne, passed away on January 14 of this year. I don’t know why that stands out to me. Except that God chose now for me to watch the movie.

Dear God, send more people like Mr. Rogers into this world, people who are true believers, who value human life and are willing to love unconditionally, who are an example of what it means to be Your child. Amen.

Oh, and also in the movie, Mr. Rogers asks the journalist who is interviewing him if he had a favorite toy or stuffed animal when he was a child. This would be mine. Have a good week. Chris

 

Snow and a Poem

When I went for my morning stroll around our yard at six am today, I took my camera along, hoping to get some pictures of my woods to post now. I knew it would be too dark for them to turn out, but you know me, I still had to try.

I measured nine inches on the deck just now. Tromping through the woods, it sure felt like more. But it’s good to have that fresh snow. Having been born and raised here in the Northwoods, where winters are harsh, somehow it feels reassuring when we get those near blizzard conditions and a forecast for highs below zero over the next couple of days.

It’s like returning to life as usual, life when I was a kid, life when things like a pandemic were for the movies.

Have a good weekend. Be safe and dress warm if you are out and about. At least this cold weather makes us want to wear those masks. (Gizmo is glad he doesn't have to wear a mask.)

One last thing, speaking of the pandemic, a poem I wrote was published this week in the Voices on the Wind online poetry journal. Click this link to read it. Chris