Traditions

My mother's favorite game is a game she never wins. Whenever we come home to visit, we play Scrabble. Mom is very smart and loves the written word, but for some reason she only won Scrabble once that I can remember. In fact, it was such a momentous event that it was written on the boxtop of winners. Whenever any of us had an extraordinary score in Scrabble, we would write it on the Scrabble box, with the date. So Mom's name, date, and score were written on the boxtop, even though it was not at all a record breaking score.

This, per our tradition, after dinner we settled down to our Scrabble game. Mom laid down a 40 Point word. This is unheard of in Mom's scrabble world. I had lousy letters- 6 of the same vowel- so I wasn't a contender. However, Asherel has suddenly become a very good Scrabbleist and was neck in neck with Mom. Mom held her own and the scores of the two were impressive.

Then Asherel cringed and put down "xi".

It got her alot of points.
"Is that a word?" asked Mom.
"I don't know," I said, "but you can't challenge or you will not win."
In Scrabble, a player may challenge a word they believe is spelled incorrectly or not a real word. If the word is correct, the challenger loses her turn.

"You have a shot at winning , Mom, and I don't , so I will fall on the sword for you. I challenge "xi!"!
It was a word- a name for a Greek letter.
Mom's turn came again and she played another stupendous word. But Asherel countered with "quod".
"Is quod a word?" asked mom.
"I don't think so," I said,"but you can't challenge! You are only in the lead by 6 points. I challenge!"
Quod was a word- it means prison. And don't any of you smirk- you did not know that!

And so on it went. I challenged Asherel's crazy guesses 5 times and 5 times I lost. I finally won a challenge when she laid down "qwesdtyhok", or something like that.

But somehow, Mom kept surging with wonderful words and finally laid down her last tile and went out with a tremendous winning score.
"Put it on the boxtop," she said,"But give the assist to Vicky."

Next , it was time to follow another tradition. We always built snow creatures at least one time a winter and as I am not sure I will brave a winter visit again, I cajoled my reluctant daughter.
"Come on," I begged,"Help me build a snow fox. It's tradition."

We had always received local acclaim for our snow creations. At least one neighbor used to always look forward to our sculptures.
"Giddy's no longer around," said Mom,"It was Giddy who loved your sculptures so much."
"Then we will just do it for you and for God," I thought and dragged my resistant teen out the door.

There was little snow so the work was hard. After an hour all I had was a fox head with a tiny body and not very big tail. I was too tired to continue. I stuck twigs in the snow for his legs and rubbing
my aching back, returned inside.

"It looks like a snow pig," said Mom , glancing out the window. "Thanks Mom, I'll remember that next time I tackle your Scrabble contenders."

And so , two traditions didn't turn out the way they usually do. But I remembered what Jesus said about traditions. He chastised the Jewish leaders for holding on to traditions as a guise for avoiding God's statutes. They would use traditions as a way to get what they wanted or glory for themselves in self-righteous hypocrisy. But God told them their traditions meant nothing to Him unless their purpose was first and foremost to glorify and honor God.
That's a good perspective to keep in mind when bodies grow weak and traditions of necessity fall away. I smiled out at my little snow pig.

Mark 7: 8-9
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.
And he continued, "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!

-nothing is impossible with God

-nothing is impossible with God