Psalm 105: 1-45 (links validated 6/24/23)

Emma laid in bed listening to her parents’ voices on the other side of the wall. “How are we going to pay this bill, Ben?” Mom asked with a worried tone. Emma huddled deeper under her blankets. She knew her parents didn’t want her to worry, but her stomach hurt. Everything was different. First, Dad lost his job, then Mom worked longer hours. Emma packed her own school lunches and helped Dad with chores and simple meals. Dad searched for a new job every day, yet Emma had overheard her parents say that they may need to move. “God, can’t you give my Dad back his job?” Emma prayed as she drifted to sleep. Mom poked her head into Emma’s room the next morning. “Time to get ready for church, sleepyhead.” “Why?” Emma asked. “If God can do the things we learn about in church, why doesn’t He give Dad back his job?” “Get ready,” Mom told her. “We’ll talk some more after breakfast.” After Emma rinsed her cereal bowl, Mom led Emma outside. “Look at the bird feeder.” “Mom, we haven’t filled it since Dad lost his job,” Emma objected. “Are the birds worried about the empty feeder?” Mom asked. Emma looked around. She saw sparrows nibbling in the trees. Others roosted in the gutter, and still more perched on her neighbour’s feeder. “No,” Emma answered. “For years, God provided for our family though Dad’s job,” Mom explained. “God is still providing, but in different ways.” “Like how the birds that used to come to our feeder now go to other places?” Emma asked. “Yes,” said Mom. “The Bible stories we learn in church remind us how God has helped many people through many hard times in many different ways. Church is also where we can connect with Christians and hear them thank God for what He’s done to help them. Their words remind us that God is with us and cares for us even though our situation may be different from theirs.” “And thanking God at church for providing for us might help someone else,” said Emma as she headed for the car...

What would you do to save the life of someone you love? Channel surfing the other night, I found a very violent movie, titled Taken, starring the looming Liam Neeson. The movie is very sweet at the beginning as Neeson dotes on his only child, a lovely teenage daughter. He is a hard man, a former spy who did dark work for the government, but he is incredibly tender toward his daughter. But then she is kidnapped in Paris at the very moment she is talking with Neeson on the phone.

All of the talk about Exodus in Psalm 105 reminded me of this year’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Underground Railroad. It re-tells the story of the historical Underground Railroad that enabled many slaves to escape their captors in the Nineteenth Century. The interesting twist in the novel is the author’s imagining that there was an actual railroad that ran underground from south to north. The slaves who ride that railroad are let off at various places along their way to eventual freedom. At each stop, life seems to be a little better as they move north, but then the fugitive slaves discover that the cruelty of slavery has simply morphed into something more subtle than, but just as horrible as they had encountered further south... The slaves who ride that railroad are let off at various places along their way to eventual freedom. At each stop, life seems to be a little better as they move north, but then the fugitive slaves discover that the cruelty of slavery has simply morphed into something more subtle than, but just as horrible as they had encountered further south.

In some scholarly circles, it is accepted wisdom that the Greeks were the first historians, the first human beings to see a thread connecting the events of our lives, to discern a plot in the randomness of it all, to tell the story of human affairs. Yes, there were stories before those first Greek historians, mythical meta-narratives that helped give meaning to existence. But the Greeks were the first to tell the story from a secular perspective. Like their efforts to create a scientific account of the physical world that left the gods out of the picture, their historical accounts were secular. So, goes the academic argument, they were the first real historians. Readers of the Bible will want to argue with that claim, because centuries before the first Greek histories there was a Hebrew history...

(see Second Sunday of Easter)

By the time I met her, Maureen was in her 80s and homebound, but her life was anything but over. Everyone told me what a joy she was to visit, and she was. She had an upbeat, positive attitude. She smiled a lot and laughed at my corny jokes. Plus, she was thankful for the little things. "I got the sweetest card the other day," she'd say, "… you'll never guess who called yesterday" … "just look at the birds – they're building a nest outside my window … what fun!" Maureen was totally bedridden, her body twisted and gnarled by effects of rheumatoid arthritis. I could only imagine the pain she endured. But I never heard her complain. If she was hurting, she kept it to herself. She didn't talk about her aches and pains; instead, she asked about others, "worse off than me," as she put it. What makes Maureen stand out in my memory, even to this day, is that, as a young woman, she was a professional ballerina. When she wasn't on stage, she was teaching ballet at her own school of dance. Ballet was her life, a life for which she was eternally thankful, even though it was now a thing of the past. What I hope you'll take home with you is this: It's a matter of perspective...