Deep Calls

The day was sunny! Sunny like liquid gold pouring out of the blue. Looking out the window now, I realize it was a gift. I woke early ... not that I had slept long. I remember the sense of awe as I realized I was about to make promises I would mean and keep and be kept by. I couldn't get up fast enough. We had decided on 10:30: I'd have set the time earlier but I was admonished that that would be unkind to the guests: {"Come on! People have to get up, dress and drive!}  -- I wanted to BE married all day. I had a Maid-of-Honor and 4 bridesmaids -- I'd have had more but Ed finally said, "you are DONE!!" I kept telling him, "she has to be there -- she is my best friend." He told me I didn't understand the concept. But they were! One at a time, each one uniquely and separately: best friend. I got ready at the church -- the bathroom was kind of tiny. Lots of excitement! Lots of laughter. The photographer decided to take the pre-wedding pho

"No. I won't go. No. I am not afraid and you should not be either. Come, sit with me. Yes, I heard them too. . .and NO! I am not a bit worried. After last week . . . that's the best threat that group of snakes can come up with? It's funny -- yes it is! Don't worry, Sweet. Don't you understand yet? No, I am not sorry I am here -- it's just --, well...  No," he said, staring off at the horizon. "No, not sorry." kissing her hand and touching her cheek. "No, it's just I don't think I'll ever actually readjust. It is a bit like waking from a dream ~ you know, the kind you don't want to leave. Only . . . well, it was more like I had been awake, and I had to come back to . . . not to sleep, but . . . I don't know. Something a bit less real. It is quite disorienting. I heard Him --  What? What was I doing? Doing? I was . . . there was so much to see and so many people. I saw Simon, whole and eyes filled with light ~ a

For those of you who don't know ~ on the other side of my life ~ I am writing a High School Bible curriculum. Right now I am writing about Noah and the Flood. This story shakes me. Picture clothes on a clothes line (yes, Virginia, there was a time before washers and dryers...) blowing in a strong wind, whipping back and forth, tumbling and twirling, flipping up, snapping down; each garment swirling in and around the ones on each side. The clothes are safe -- anchored with a clothes pin to a taut line. That is what my emotions feel like as I read and ponder and pray my way through the story. It happens every time I read it. First of all the story is a work of art! Until I began researching Genesis a few years ago, digging under the surface, or I should say under the hardened crust of my modern literary-view based understanding, I just saw the stories. They were too often shellacked in my thinking by the old Sunday School rewrites and paraphrases that were my first introductions to

The unthinkable has happened: Greeks up in Antioch got saved ~ Greeks who were not Jewish Greeks. It is far away, 300 miles away from Jerusalem as the crow flies. I think sometimes the church of today misses and misunderstands the "9.5 Earthquake scale of the shaking" this caused. God had been dropping bread crumbs along a path to tease and tempt the church to walk into the thinking of a new paradigm.      ~ Jesus told the disciples they would be his witnesses (for that read martyrs ) to the ends of the earth.           ~ On the day of Pentecost, the church grew by 3000 people because the goodness of God had been proclaimed by the disciples in the languages of the known world of that day. {check it out...that would be the 'in Jerusalem' part of Jesus' commission in Acts 1:7-8}       ~ "Greek" widows are not served dinner        SO  men are appointed as 'deacons' to do what amounted to                               ' Meals-on-Wheels&#