Leaving Salem

Before there was a Memorial Day, there was Decoration Day. Developed in the Post-Civil War decades, Decoration Day was exactly that: A day to decorate the graves of fallen soldiers. Over time, and with the sacrifice of so many young men and women in two World Wars, the name was changed, and Memorial Day became an official US holiday.

Decoration Day still persists, however, as a way of honoring not only those who died in war, but all the beloved dead of the past. On some weekend between May and September – local tradition usually determines the date – families all over the mountain south show up at their ancestors’ graves.

They cut the grass and trim the weeds around the burial stones. They throw away the old, faded flowers, pick up tree limbs, and complete any necessary repairs.  All this work is usually done on Saturday, and then on Sunday the living descendants of the dead return to the recently cleaned cemetery with freshly cut roses, potted plants, and silk flower arrangements to decorate the graves.

This affair usually involves a sermon or a memorial service, a few old hymns like “That Glad Reunion Day,” and this is followed by a massive dinner on the grounds. Stories of the old saints gone by are told, new babies and grandchildren are presented, and an impromptu family reunion ensues.

A product of the southern Appalachians, I have some firsthand experience with Decoration Day. So does my wife. Every July she finds herself neck-deep in grave stones with her mountain mama at the Zion Church Cemetery on Snake Nation Road, Blue Ridge, Georgia, pruning hedgerows and running a weed trimmer (her father usually stays away – he’s from New Jersey and never really got into mountain culture anyway).

On one hand, Decoration Day is very practical. Someone has to care for the burial grounds. But on the other hand, Decoration Day is also very social. It scratches a nostalgic itch. It connects people with their past, where they came from, it brings families back together, and kindles some old, good memories.

Personally, I love the ancestor stuff, old gospel songs, and dinner on the grounds; but I don’t like Decoration Day among the tombs. It’s because there are always one or two crazy relatives at the event that make the whole thing unbearable. Granted, we all have those nutty aunts, cousins, and in-laws that hang on the family tree. But that’s not the unbearable quality of which I’m speaking.

It’s those people who live for this event in the cemetery. They love, not remembering and honoring the past, but living in the past. Everything about their life is an effort to go backward. They are more at home among the graves of yesterday than the celebrations of today; and they have become as dead as the granite headstones around which they hover.

Certainly it’s easy to get trapped in the boneyard of the past. The death of a partner, bad choices we have made, ways we have been harmed or how we have harmed others, the heartbreaking losses of love and life, numerous self-inflicted wounds: There is no magical whitewash for our past and no tiny recessed button in the back of our skulls to reset our memory banks.

No, we can’t forget about the past if forgetting means acquiring a blessed case of selective amnesia. But we can forget the past if forgetting means living in such a way that the past no longer has a totalitarian control over us. Properly forgetting the past is not an act of erasing our memories; properly forgetting is an act of defiance, whereby we keep living and keep going.

Properly forgetting is when we rightly remember and honor the burial of yesterday, but we absolutely refuse to waste today by living in the graveyard. So when it comes to our past, let’s put it in its place. Remember it. Honor it. Mourn it and celebrate it. But then let’s get on with it, because life is moving forward with or without us.

Ronnie McBrayer is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of multiple books. You can read more and receive regular e-columns in your inbox at www.ronniemcbrayer.net.

When I met him in the fall of 2005, Joshua Burton was seventy-five years old. On a walker, slowed by age, his caramel skin calloused by years of hard work, he still had the light of life in his eyes.

His “girlfriend,” Susie Ward was even more energetic. Having surpassed three score and ten years herself, you wouldn’t know it. She moved and laughed like a woman half her actual age. The life of the party she was.

After their spouses had died, these two future lovebirds struck up a great friendship and later a great romance. It was their plan to stick together for the remaining years they had on earth. So it was on Monday morning, August 29, 2005.

Josh had spent the night before at Susie’s. She lived in a sturdy little shotgun house, anchored deep in theMississippimud; a house she had lived in her entire adult life. This was the home where she had raised her children and where her first husband had died.

This house had survived more than a fewGulf of Mexicohurricanes, including the devastating onslaught of Camille in 1969. But Susie’s house did not survive Katrina. Joshua Burton and Susie Ward found themselves in a situation they never anticipated.

As the winds howled and the house shook, Josh swung his crippled legs off the bed in the dark of that morning to look outside. His feet landed in ankle-deep water. Hurricane Katrina had pushed a wall of water miles up the Pearl River, and now it washed over the town ofPearlington,Mississippi, from the north.

By mid-morning Josh and Susie were clinging to a porch post treading in eight feet of water. They prayed that God would somehow save them. Then, at the point of giving up, when Josh’s crippled legs could no longer keep him afloat, a life jacket popped from below the surface.

They clung to the bobbing house for the next six hours, and when the waters receded it took rescuers three days to find them. They were taken to separate hospitals, one inMeridianand one inJackson, and their families, thinking they were both dead, did not find them for two additional weeks.

As Josh and Susie were rescued, they made a promise: “If God will allow us to be reunited, we’ll be married and finish our days together.” That promise was kept.

On a cold December afternoon, as they were handed the keys to their new hurricane Katrina cottage by volunteers from Habitat for Humanity of Walton County, Florida, they voiced their vows of commitment one to the other in the front yard of their new home.

Buster Woodruff, aWaltonCountybuilder, rented Josh’s tux and gave Ms. Susie away. I was honored to officiate the ceremony as more than a hundred friends and volunteers – donors, designers, and carpenters – stood on the front porch of that new house as witnesses and participants in a fantastic celebration.

Here was this old man and this old woman, near the end of their lives. Why did they go to all this trouble? Because they could; they were alive. Grace had fallen down on them with the rain that stormy morning as they treaded water.

As they said their vows, twenty-five feet from their new home, caskets were still lying on top of the ground, burst open from the flooded cemeteries. More than 30,000 families were still displaced. The local economy was in the toilet.

These two could have sat around in a smelly FEMA trailer and pointed fingers and bemoaned how terrible it was – and it was terrible – inhumanely terrible. They could have assigned blame to this group or that group for why Katrina struck.

They could have even shaken an angry fist at heaven and blamed God for taking away more than he should have and putting on them more than they could bear. They didn’t do any of those things.

They, and their neighbors who had all lost so much, chose instead to get on with it. They chose to live the life they still had to live; to thank God for what remained, and to steal joy wherever they found it.

So thanks Josh and Susie for showing us the faith to press on in a world not yet redeemed. Thank you for keeping your promise.

Years ago my sister traveled toEastern Europe,Russia, and theUkraineon a mission trip. She worked among the indigenous Christians on a number of worthy projects. And when her time ran up, she returned home with a heart full of joy, a head full of memories, and bags full of strange and wonderful souvenirs.

Since I’m the only twin brother my sister has, she brought me a unique gift. I got a set of Babushka dolls, those traditional Russian nesting dolls. When you open the first doll it has a smaller doll on the inside, so on and so forth, until you reach a tiny weeble-wobble deep within.

Actually my gift wasn’t that special. You can pick up Babushkas for pennies on the rubles. When my sister thought of me she probably thought, “How little can I spend and still appear thoughtful.” Whatever. I know how it works.

Anyway, this was after Russian Perestroika, Polish Solidarity, and the other movements that unhinged communism inEastern Europe. Boris Yeltsin was president of what was left of the Soviet regime.

The outer doll of my Babushka set was, entertainingly, Boris Yeltsin. His likeness had a dopey little smile and rumpled hair as if he had been drinking too much vodka, accurately portrayed I fear.

When Yeltsin was opened, there was Gorbachev with the familiar birth mark on his forehead. Inside Gorbachev was Khrushchev, then Josef Stalin, and finally Vladimir Lenin himself. I now keep all these little Communists boxed in the attic. They are much too dangerous to be let loose in the world again.

The deeper you went within the dolls, the closer you got to the essence of Soviet power, its source and beginning. As layer after layer fell away, and finally you held a tiny characterization of Lenin in your hand, you could truthfully say, “Ah, now I’ve gotten to the bottom of it all. This is the seed, the kernel from which all others grew.”

I, and many others, have tried this with Jesus. We all do, I suppose. We have struggled to unravel him, to break open his shell, and then the next, and the next, and the next. Then, we think we can get to the bottom of who he is.

We reconstruct his historical setting. We dissect his words. We set out to determine who he “really was” and is. But there is a problem. When dealing with this Jesus, we do not find ourselves moving to something smaller and more manageable.

The deeper we go, and as the layers fall away, we move to something greater. He gets larger, more uncontrollable, more inconceivable, more wonderful than our minds can imagine. We are the ones left to weeble and wobble.

Yet, there is a seed, a core to the historical Jesus as well as the exalted Christ of our faith. It is the element of sacrifice. There at the end of it all, when the onion is peeled, is a cross. Jesus, for two millennia, has been marked by this instrument of death.

More accurately, he has been marked by the cross since before the threads of time were ever spun. He was “slain before the foundations of the world,” John the revelator said.

There is a cross hanging above my desk where these words are being typed. I wear a crucifix around my neck. I even have a Celtic version of the symbol inked into my skin. And while I behold the cross every day, I cannot take hold of all its implications.

C. S. Lewis challenges us to look at the cross, not as a display of godly anger toward Jesus or the world, but as a Lover absorbing the shame and humiliation of betrayal and unfaithfulness. Lewis said, “Jesus shows on the cross that God’s love is not about violence and retaliation. The cross is the only true language of forgiveness.”

That stick of wood is a display of agonizing love shown to a world lost in self-centeredness and self-delusion, a world that has done nothing but be disloyal to and reject its Maker. The cross shows us how far Love will go: God, humiliated and bleeding in a suffering mess, bearing up underneath the betrayal of His own creation.

If you can get to the bottom of that, let me know. You’re a smarter person than most.

My grandmother lived her entire life on a farm. First, it was cotton, then it was soybean, and finally it was cows and chickens. I spent every summer of my childhood and teen years on that farm, working in my uncle’s chicken houses, chasing stray cows, bailing and stacking hay.

I learned the very first day that farming is hard work. The days start early and run late. It takes a lot of fuel in the body to work that hard for that long. But my grandmother, a master in the kitchen, could meet the demands.

She cooked for everybody working; my uncle and aunt, several of the grandchildren, the hired help, the neighbors. On any given summer day, you could gather around her big oak table and find it running over with everything battered, greased and deep fried.

Chicken, gravy, biscuits, squash, coconut pie, mashed potatoes, sweet tea, cornbread – all the things that doctors now say will kill you. It was wonderful. A man or a woman could eat like that for lunch, take a thirty minute power nap, and have the energy to work the rest of the day.

Then he or she would come in at dark and sit down at the same table and eat it all again. And guess what? No one on the farm was obese, had high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or had cardiac issues or diabetes. No one.

Why? Because when you toil like a serf for sixteen hours a day, you can eat what ever you want and as much as you want. You need it, and you burn it up.

Now, my grandmother is gone. She died more than five years ago. Most of the family farm has been sold as well. Mass-produced little houses and subdivisions sit on the land that used to produce cotton or graze cows.

No one in my family works as hard as they used to. Many of us never even leave the comfort of air-conditioning to make a living. That’s fine. The problem is a few of us still eat like we’re working on the farm. The result: Obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, open heart surgery, diabetes. We’re not working off the calories like we used to.

Christians are over-eaters. No, not necessarily at meal time, though you will find more than one rotund Bible-thumper in front of you at the Sunday buffet. We have an eating disorder when it comes to getting “spiritual food.”

Give me good music. Give me good preaching. Pass the bread and the wine. Fill up my belly. And before you know it we are so plump and drunk we can’t get off the pew to help our neighbor.

We have become spiritually obese: Church potatoes that sit, feast, and nap, but refuse to get up and “work it off” in the fields of God’s farm. So we are fat, slow, and unfit.

There are more than 300,000 churches in theUnited States. Americans give $93 billion dollars a year to houses of worship, and then we spend eighty-five cents out of every dollar on ourselves. Only two cents out of every dollar put in the offering plate ever makes it out of the country.

Further, we mow down acres of forests and spill gallons of ink, buying $5 billion of Christian books, studies, and other products every year, just to aid in our personal spiritual growth. We have more than we need – spiritually and physically.

To lament that you can’t get spiritually “fed” is like complaining of starvation while standing in line at the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. We’re not hungry. We aren’t getting rid of what we have been given.

The challenge for us is to live out the revelation to which we have been exposed; to take the hundreds of sermons, the countless books and Bible studies, the millions of Christian words that have crossed our ears, and put them to action in our hearts, hands, and feet.

We must take the multitude baskets of broken bread and jars of flowing wine, spread out on the table before us each week like a Southern feast, and share it with those who are hungry and thirsty.

Our challenge is to push away from the table, shake off the sluggishness of too many carbs and too much wine, and get back to work in God’s world.

When I was growing up, church for me was not a social activity. It was not a weekly event or a spiritual distraction to assist you with the trials of life. Church was a non-negotiable obligation.

Sunday School, Sunday morning preaching, Discipleship Training, Sunday night, Monday night youth group, Wednesday night prayer meeting, choir rehearsal, revival, on and on: I had a drug problem from a very early age. I was drug to church every time the doors opened.

As the great Ferrol Sams puts it: “It was imperative that one be Saved. It was just as important to be Raised Right. The child who had been Raised Right was not only Saved but had spent a large part of his formative years in the House of the Lord. Methodists probably could be Saved, but there was a question whether any of them really had been Raised Right.”

A part of being Raised Right was to never – ever – use the Lord’s name in vain. It was rumored that some people of indescribable wickedness actually did use God’s name “in vain.” These sons of the devil attached a four-letter-word as God’s last name.

But for one Raised Right, this remained a vicious rumor, an urban legend too dreadful to believe. I had never heard such language employed: Until the summer of my twelfth year.

About a half-dozen of my friends and I were playing together on a hot, lazy afternoon. It was the kind of idle summer day that preadolescent boys use to get in trouble, and we did not disappoint.

We were playing with a knife. No real explanation beyond that is necessary. I will add only that this huge Rambo-style dagger somehow got airborne. It landed squarely in the center of Michael Holden’s right thigh.

He shrieked in pain, “God dammit!!!” The sun grew dark from the sixth to the ninth hour. The veil of the temple was torn in two. Time stopped. Five twelve-year-old boys slinked off to home without a word.

We left Michael sitting there with the knife piercing his Levi’s. We knew he would be dead by morning, not from a knife wound mind you, but by the hand of the angel of the Lord, who would strike him down in vengeance for sacrilege.

I’m not recommending you add this irreverent phrase to your regular vocabulary, but this is not a commandment against cursing, per se. If only it was that easy!

“Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain,” means “Don’t profess a faith in God with your words – invoking his name – and then betray him with your actions.” When we do that, we make his good name, vanity, useless, or worthless.

This is not about using the English word “damn” with God’s name, as much as we bristle when we hear or use it. It is a commandment against hypocrisy.

God’s name is so high and holy we don’t even know what it is. Not really. The ancient Hebrews wouldn’t even spell it out for fear of defaming him. It was too sacred to even put on paper so the scribes would leave out the vowels, leaving later readers to more or less guess.

The Hebrews understood that when you use God’s name as the umbrella over your life, your words, and your actions, be certain that your life, words, and actions, represent him properly. To do otherwise, is to take his name “in vain.” It is to defraud him. It is to be a hypocrite.

Hypocrisy usually raises its ugly head, not when we pray or in our houses of worship, but in how we speak to and treat others. The words aimed at others – God’s creatures – are indirectly aimed at him.

What we say about and to others can either glorify or defame the God we worship. The “sticks and stones,” to use the children’s rhyme, we throw at our neighbors, are actually being thrown at God. For how we treat others is the clearest testament of how we treat the One we worship.

If only honoring the third commandment was as easy as not saying a particular black-listed word. We’d have it beat. But living and speaking in a way that properly represents our Creator? I guess that’s what being Raised Right was all about in the first place.

I was smacked away from the dinner table on one occasion. Calm down, I was never abused, not even close. But my parents did believe in the effectiveness of that proverb, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” Thus, I was definitely not spoiled.

Even if corporal punishment had not been practiced in my childhood home, I still would not have been over-indulged. Our family was quite poor. My father often worked two jobs in the textile mills to pay the bills and keep the roof over our heads, and my mother cared for my youngest sibling who was very ill. There was always more month than money, and my wardrobe of patched blue jeans and worn-out tennis shoes proved as much – and sometimes, so did our diet.

On what felt like the umpteenth night in a row that my mother served us the culinary delights of macaroni and cheese and fish sticks, I just could not eat another serving of the Gorton’s Fisherman. So, not knowing the economic pressures of feeding a family on a meager income, I voiced my complaint: “Fish sticks, again! Is that all we have?”

You can guess the response. She said, “Why don’t you learn to be thankful! There are children all over the world who would love to have a fish stick to eat.” You can also guess my unwise answer: “Well,” I said, “Why don’t you send those children my fish sticks, because I can’t stand to eat another one.” I discovered that a fish stick tastes pretty good with a fat lip.

My mother shared a lot of other well-worn but accurate expressions with me as well (usually not as forcefully as the whole fish stick episode turned out). You heard these words of wisdom too: “Money doesn’t grow on trees…When you have your own house you can make your own rules…Quit running with that or you will put your eye out…If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all…Don’t put that in your mouth; you don’t know where it has been…Close the door – were you born in a barn…Always wear clean underwear…If everyone jumped off a cliff would you do it too…Your face is going to freeze like that.”

We’ve all heard these things because children of all generations need words of wisdom and correction; because children of all generations like to run with scissors in their hands, object to their mother’s cooking, and leave the door standing wide open. Words of correction (even those that are a bit unorthodox at the dinner table) are expressions of a mother’s love, and all children need love.

We Christians emphasize the Father-like love of God. And yes, he is our Father. But this emphasis on the paternal, can give us a blind spot so that we fail to see and emphasize the deep mother-quality to God’s love for us. God is also Mother, with a love that is warm, deeply affectionate, and unconditional. In many ways, a mother’s guiding, nurturing, compassionate love is best reflective of whom God is.

I like how John Killinger, in his book Lost in Wonder, puts it. He writes, “I believe in the love of all mothers, and its importance in the lives of their children. It is stronger than steel, softer than down, and more resilient than a green sapling on the hillside. It closes wounds, melts disappointments, and enables the weakest child to stand tall and straight in the fields of adversity. I believe that this love, even at its best, is only a shadow of the love of God, a dark reflection of all that we can expect of him, both in this life and the next.”

Certainly, not everyone has experienced this kind of love from their parents, and are thus quite suspicious of a God who offers to love us without manipulation, abuse or ill-treatment. Still, as the Psalmist said, “Even if my father and mother abandon me, the Lord will hold me close” (Psalm 27:10). And hold use he/she will, because we all need love.

Ronnie McBrayer is a syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of multiple books. You can read more and receive regular e-columns in your inbox at www.ronniemcbrayer.net.

Having lunch with friends recently, we began talking about our earliest childhood memories. Maybe you have a firmer grip on your memory than we do, but none of us could recall anything but flashbulb moments before our kindergarten years.

My friends have a young son, not yet three-years-old. He was sitting at the table with us, now throwing French fries across the room. As we talked, his mother looked over at him, turned to the rest of us at the table and said, “If something happened to me now, while he was so young, he would have no memory of me.”

This sort of threw a wet blanket on our otherwise happy lunch date, but she was right. Here was a child so devoted to and dependant upon his mother that he can never be more than a few feet from her presence, and yet should she vanish, he would have no memory of her.

That observation really got me thinking. Does a child – any young child or baby in arms – really know his mother? No, not in the least; not at all.

He doesn’t know his mother’s hometown; that she was a cheerleader in high school; that she graduated from college at the top of her class; that she has a remarkable career. He doesn’t even know the color of her eyes.

He knows nothing of her family history, her most life-shaping experiences, her favorite meal, or how she likes to spend her quiet time – when she gets any quiet time. He knows none of these things. He doesn’t know her.

And yet, he does know her, better than anyone else. He recognizes her voice, her laugh, her touch, her smell. Even as a toddler, he could pick her out of room of hundreds of other parents. He loves her, runs after, and cries for her.

At the same time, he is both in ignorance of the very one who gave him life, and clings to her with such attachment that he cannot live without her. It is a beautiful sancta ignorantia – holy ignorance.

We all live in holy ignorance, even when we are “certain” about the things we believe. Just as a mother makes herself known to her child, God has made himself known to us through his creation, his Scriptures, and supremely though Jesus Christ. We get it; at least enough of it for faith to be born and to grow. But we don’t understand it all. We can’t.

Paul recognized this when he prayed for the Ephesians, “May you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep Christ’s love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.”

When we speak of Christ we are speaking only of our understanding about and experiences with him. He remains out of our reach. Yes, we know Jesus, but we don’t know him, and we will not know him completely this side of thekingdomofGod.

This doesn’t weaken our faith. It pushes our faith forward. We press on in pursuit of more, because the faith we hold on to is incomplete. Our conclusions about God, about Jesus, about the Bible, about our own spiritual experiences, are always unfinished.

Yes, we cling with confidence to our faith, and yet we learn to hold to our conclusions loosely. “Here we stand. We can do no other,” as Luther said, and still we know our beliefs will continue to develop over the course of our lifetimes. We confess, “This is what we believe,” and yet what we believe is in process.

Faith in Christ is not something we master in this lifetime, no more than completely knowing another person is possible in this lifetime. But our inability to grasp the totality of Jesus Christ is not reason to give up on faith.

This does not stop us from loving him, from pursuing him, or from crying after him. It intensifies our chase. For we recognize that the only way to know the unknowable God is to pursue him until he makes Christ “all and in all.”

So, the answer to the question of the tent-meeting revivalist, “Do you know Jesus?” is an absolute and positive, “Yes!” followed by an absolute and positive “No!”

Sancta ignorantia: I plead holy ignorance.

Before her retirement, my friend Betty Ann worked for the tourist development council of my hometown. She was the convention and visitors director. God must have a sense of humor. Let me explain.

As she and her family unpacked in the sprawling metropolis that isCalhoun,Georgia, it didn’t take long for her new neighbors to arrive with the welcome wagon. Betty Ann was asked the normal “get-to-know-you” questions which basically consist of “Who’s your mama?” and “Where do you go to church?”

The answer to those two questions pretty much determines one’s fate in the small country towns of the Bible Belt. Betty Ann’s answers made her a strange animal indeed.

First, she and her family were not from here; “here” being inside the confines of theGordonCountyline, established 1850. Anyone outside those boundaries was a foreigner. Betty Ann was a sojourner from points far above theMason-Dixon Line. Yes, she was a Yankee.

Second, Betty Ann didn’t have a “normal” last name like Greeson, or Carson, or Wilson. No, her last name was Surdykowski. It didn’t matter that she was born with the last name O’Reilly. Her husband had “ski” on the end of his name. She was Polish.

As the gals from the welcome wagon headed for the door after their first visit, they were in deep contemplation over this new woman in town. One turned just before crossing the threshold and asked, “I have one more question. Are you also…Catholic?” Strike three.

That’s right. Betty Ann Surdykowski, director of tourism for a town whose premier annual event is a Civil War reenactment, was a Yankee, Polish, and Catholic. God is still laughing at this most un-Southern trifecta.

But hey, the town gave Betty Ann a shot. I’m glad. We found her to be a lovely woman: Smart, funny, well-connected, a wife and mother. Everyone came to know this about her. Our lives were greatly enriched because she dared to journey into the hills ofAppalachia.

In the Good Book Jesus said, “Do not judge others and you will not be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others.” Why does he always complicate our lives with sayings like these? And more than complicate, this strikes at the heart of what we do best: Critique other people.

You know it’s a favorite pastime, and we all participate. We do it at the mall, the theater, the beach. We call it “people watching.” As the public parades by we sort them into categories like dealing cards.

We look at the color of their skin, the number and location of their tattoos or piercings, the ethnicity of their last name, their nationality, neighborhood or religion. Then, we are able to pigeon-hole them rather quickly, and draw the lines that separate us.

“Oh, I’m not judging others,” a good Christian might say. “Jesus said we would know people by the fruit they bear. I’m just a fruit inspector.” A fruit inspector, you say. Since when did God authorize us to make the management decisions?

There is enough separation in the world: Democrat versus Republican, Christian versus Muslim, White versus Black, Male versus Female, North versus South, East versus West, Haves versus Have-nots, Protestant versus Catholic. The church is called to a different kind of existence.

The church is united not by race, color, creed, nationality, ethnicity, or socio-economic standards. We are united by the body and blood of a crucified and risen Jesus. The New Testament church was and remains the only society in which rich, poor, slaves, masters, hungry and the full could come together as equals without prejudice.

Without prejudice? What would that world look like? A world without narrow-mindedness, bigotry, or intolerance; a world that does not size up others based on the town of their birth, the accent with which they speak, or the shape of their house of worship: That world would look a whole lot like the kingdom of God.

Our neighborhoods are filled will Betty Ann Surdykowskis – people we think so different than who we are. Give them a chance. You will find they aren’t that unusual after all.

You will find new friends. You will let go of some of the prejudices that have kept your world so small. And you just might enjoy a slice of how things were made to be.

My kids are always after me to play a game with them: Monopoly, Uno, Deal or No Deal, and lately even Blackjack. That’s right. The preacher’s kids play Blackjack. I figure they’ll need those skills somewhere in the future.

So in the spirit of my game-playing children, please play a game with me. You can play along right where you sit reading this paper. It’s a brainteaser called the “Game of Tens.” Get your pencil and note pad ready, and answer the following questions:

Name the ten wealthiest people in the world.

Name the last ten Presidents of theUnited States.

Name the last ten winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Name the last ten winners of Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.”

Name the current ten companies at the top of the Fortune 500.

So, how did you do? That bad, eh? But just in case someone answered them all without the assistance of Google, e-mail me. I’d like to congratulate you. For the rest of us, however, try this second set of questions. I’m sure you’ll do a little better:

Name the ten most memorable experiences of your life.

Name ten people whom you love.

Name ten people who have an influence on your life.

Name ten places you have visited that you will never forget.

Name ten holidays or celebrations you have recorded in a photo album, on video, or on film.

The “Game of Tens” has been around for years. Of course it has come in varied forms and with different names, but the crux of the thing has always been the same. Huge, world-shattering events are laid alongside the common and familiar.

The lesson this game teaches, regardless of its variation, is always the same and always quite simple. The things that we think are so eternally important, many times, turn out to be nothing but dust. We don’t remember them at all.

And the things so common, so close to us we can no longer see them; those things so routine and ordinary, these turn out to be the most important things in our life.

No, the events that have most shaped us aren’t found on the front page of the newspaper or recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records, but these events and people are recorded in our hearts. That makes all the difference.

While his words have been adapted and often attributed to others, Don Herold wrote in the October 1953 edition of Reader’s Digest, a piece entitled, “If I Had My Life to Live Over.” He was in his mid-sixties at the time and had lived long enough to learn a few things.

What he learned need not be lost on us. He wrote:

“If I had my life to live over, I would try to make more mistakes. I would relax. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I know of very few things that I would take seriously. I would be less hygienic.

I would go more places. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I have been one of those people who live sensibly and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I have had my moments. But if I had it to do over again, I would have more of them – a lot more. I never go anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had it to do over, I would travel lighter.

If I had my life to live over, I would pay less attention to people. I would seek out more teachers who inspire relaxation and fun. I had a few of them, fortunately, and I figure it was they who kept me from going entirely to the dogs.

I would start barefooted a little earlier in the spring and stay that way a little later in the fall. I would play hooky more. I would shoot more paper wads. I would have more dogs. I would keep later hours.

I’d have more sweethearts. I would fish more. I would go to more circuses. I would go to more dances. I would ride on more merry-go-rounds. I would be carefree as long as I could.”

 Amen.

My wife Cindy is a jackrabbit. Do you know what that means? I’ll explain.

Cindy and I are bike riders. No, not the motorized, belching exhaust type, but the human-powered, pedaling type. We are bicycle riders. We have learned that bicycle riding is good for your health and your marriage. There are few sports we enjoy more than ripping off thirty or so miles before breakfast. We enjoy the exercise and the time together.

Cindy, as I said, is a jackrabbit. “Jackrabbit” is my term for one who jumps off the starting line of her bike ride each morning as if her butt was on fire. Cindy always sets a brisk pace in the coolness and freshness of each day.

I admit that when we begin, I can’t catch her. It takes a dozen miles or so before my legs and lungs wake up. I spend the first part of our rides together as a dot in her rearview mirror.

This jackrabbit approach to cycling only has one problem: Setting a fast pace and keeping that pace are two very different animals indeed. The jackrabbit of the morning can quickly become the tortoise of the afternoon.

So as Cindy disappears over the horizon in the opening miles of the day, I bide my time. I set a steady pace, knowing I will catch up to her down the road. There she will be, curled up in the fetal position along the side of the road, sucking wind.

Are you a jackrabbit? Are you that type “A” personality? Do you have a gung-ho kind of approach to life with only two speeds, fast and faster? Do you love to grab hold of huge, Herculean tasks and whip them into submission?

If so, hey, I tip my hat to you. You get more done before lunch than most people get done in a week. But a word of warning: Will you be around when the day is finished, or will you too be lying in the shade frothing at the mouth and sucking wind?

Remember, this jackrabbit approach to life and work has only one problem: Setting a fast pace and keeping that pace are two very different animals.

The Old Testament patriarch, Moses, led the people ofIsraelout ofEgyptand out of slavery. Bravely he marched into the land of the Pharaohs and demanded, “Let my people go!”

Even as I write these words, in my mind I can see Charlton Heston, staff in hand, staring down Yul Brynner in the Egyptian sand. Could two actors have looked any more “biblical”?

After the escape from Egypt, the deadly plagues, and the crossing of theRed Sea, Moses’ job as deliverer was complete. His role transitioned from acclaimed savior to not-so-glamorous administrator.

The people brought all their troubles and disputes to Moses for him to arbitrate. From early in the morning to late at night, day after ceaseless day, Moses was there settling the quarrels of others. He started well, but before long the jackrabbit was exhausted.

Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, came to him with constructive criticism, as father-in-laws are prone to do with the foolish boys who marry their daughters: “This is not good! You’re going to wear yourself out,” he said. “This job is too heavy a burden for you to handle all by yourself” (See Exodus 18).

Moses’ father-in-law went on to tell Moses to share the load. Get some help. Set a manageable pace. Yes, do the important work God had assigned you, but do it in a way you can finish, not just begin.

The one life you have been given to live is not a sprint. It is a marathon. If you use up all your energy today, setting a tempo impossible to maintain, the race will not carry you across the finish line. It will only carry you to an early grave.

You’ve got a long way to go. Take care of yourself. Stop and rest when you need to. Eat right. Do a little sight-seeing along the way. Let others help you. Pace yourself. Take Jethro’s counsel to heart: “You’re going to wear yourself out.”

You may not finish first, but at least you will finish. That’s better than lying stupefied in the shade.