Saturday, July 21, 2012

My favorite thing ever was building forts


And there was much muttering about Him among the people. While some said, “He is a good man,” others said, “No, he is leading the people astray.” John 7: 12

It wasn’t easy.  Nor straightforward.  Not even his brothers and sisters could figure Him out.  Things seemed especially dense around the religious people, the folks who had gathered, for instance, to celebrate the Feast of Booths.  

Maybe because they missed the point.  The Feast of Booths was when the people were to  construct small huts of hadar trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook and really do nothing else but delight in God’s provision.  Kids LOVE this holiday, running pell mell through the fields, free and happy.  I so remember all of my fort building activities as a child. Away from the clutter of society, we would brush aside the dry leaves, gather sticks and branches and sit happy.  Sweet.

Rather than abandoning the routine of everyday life and celebrating God and God’s goodness alone, it seems that the grown-ups had brought piles of baggage along, preconceptions and personal efforts that had been dragged behind them, like so many overloaded carry-on suitcases with misdirected wobbly wheels.  The more pious, the higher the bundles.  

Hey wasn’t He supposed to be born in Bethlehem? Hey why is He saying these things even though He is uneducated? What’s with this healing thing on the Sabbath?  Mutter, mutter.  Trying to figure out how God is supposed to be and how He fits neatly into our timetable and our plans for our future and not make things uncomfortable or dangerous.  Carefully hewing cisterns out of rock, nice and sturdy. But empty.  

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”  The choice is clear.  My heaps of stuff.  My busted cisterns that hold no water. Or rivers of living water flowing out of my heart.  Tumbling into freedom.

Gosh.  

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