Broken Alabaster Boxes

Different. Starkly different.  Public busing.  Crammed beside a stranger.  Dripping sweat together.  Trees and plants,  Unnamed to me. People, Strangers.  Faces and names I do not know.  Ways of living, Of surviving,  Learned anew.   Yet not different. Still people.  Still needs.  Still working together.  Still dying to self.  Still seeking Christ, together.  Not better than Or wiser. Just different.  And the same. Just people. 

Together they worked.  Nodding to one another.  Laboring together.  Searching for treasure.  Here?  Or here?  Often their efforts rewarded.  Marching thro seas of useless things, To claim that which they sought.  Sometimes frantically.  Sometimes stoically.  Always persistent.  My new friends.  Unwelcome tho they be.  Meet the ants. 

Us four. Under the rays of the hot sun. Fresh-dug potatoes in hand. Rubbing dirt, Tossing into buckets. So strange that we assemble in this way. Yet not long ago, not so strange. Strange now because we've grown,  Changed, Life moved on. And we use to rub potatoes together. But now, hardly ever. Now one leaving. Never the same again. Yet would we want to be those four children, Forever rubbing dirt and hauling potatoes? Would we have froze time there? A thousand no's. What would be the joy in that? What would be the lessons and growing? What would be the adventure? No, not to stay there forever. But nether to stay here. To go, not clutching the potatoes and the dirt, But to grasp at the next. The potatoes and the dirt were good. And we're glad. But what came after was good. And what will come is good.  Maybe ...

September and October mean fall. Lovely, forever-blue skies. Deep golds, reds, oranges. The heavy smell of pumpkin spice and hot chocolate. The flicker of candles. Simmering soup. Crunch of leaves underfoot. Minnesota in fall is endlessly lovely. But now. No lovely days of cool weather. Or crisp mornings laced with frost. Or hot drinks sliding down to warm. Because it's to hot in Grenada. To hot for frost. For cool mornings. For satisfying soups. Just to hot. To hot for anything but the ocean. This place I'm going. What will it be like? Hot. I know that. Different. Very different. Hard. Like here. Yet good, like here. Because God is good. There will not be Minnesota falls there.  Because it's not Minnesota. But there will be other things. Things I will learn to love. And it's ok. Because the God that gave good gifts...

No bits of chocolate morsels. No thickly slathered frosting. These instead are heavily delicious. Fragrances of maple and oatmeal, Somehow homey and comforting. Edges crisp. Glaze hardening. Taste tantalizing for yet another. Just one taste and they beg for more. Taking them to my brother's work, One was reported to eat 8. Leaving another with none. "You gotta make more." The recipe simple. Yet satisfyingly good. Oatmeal rounds with pooled glaze. Come see me. And we'll make them together.

We are man. As dust. As grass.  Passing.  Fading.  Decaying. He is God. Immortal.  Everlasting. Eternal. We as men pass away. He as God is forever. And the only way to anything of lasting value as men of dust, The only way to that which will not pass away, Is to reach out to the Eternal,  To the Word made flesh, To the God of mercy that endureth forever. Surrendered to Him. Then He can use this passing grass, This dust, For that which endureth forever.