The Old Made New

My baby girl, the one born just yesterday, got her driver permit. Afterwards, we hurried to a parking lot to practice driving. After she emerged unscathed from that, I directed her to a cemetery. If she misjudged car position or speed there, we were in no danger of killing anyone. At least no one who didn't already know what it was like to be dead.

New drivers are the single greatest cause of heart attacks. Forget high fat diets or sedentary lifestyle. I know this for a fact. I have taught three kids to drive. Actually, Asherel did quite well. In about ten years, I think I will be ready to let her drive on a real street. For now, driving among the dead is a perfect challenge.

It is a week of firsts and of lasts. Asherel thinks she needs a break from agility contests. After three years of competition with sweet Honeybun, she thinks it might be nice to let Honeybun just be a pet, a beloved pet. One that doesn't have to jump, or weave, or tunnel. She may go back to it, and will keep training now and then. So today and tomorrow might be our last Agility Trial. It is bittersweet. Without agility, Honeybun would not have been healed. But now she is. And maybe it is time to rest on our laurels for a bit. I won't miss the getting up at the crack of dawn. I will miss the joy of watching a dog who once jumped to go after another dog's jugular now jumping to obey the mistress she has come to love. We have run out of room on our ribbon strand stretched across the ceiling of Asherel's room. Many of them are first place ribbons. But the string is heavy with accolades now. Perhaps it really is time to move on....

Here is where the trip to the cemetery helped me. The only ones who don't experience change and growth are the dead. Nothing that lives remains the same. We move on to new hopes, new dreams, new challenges. No one should mourn the past slipping away to a different future. It is God's greatest promise that the old will be made new, and death will be reversed.

And at that point, the cemetery denizens might rise up and protest the new driver practicing on their road....

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!





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