It is a blessing when your children come full circle and return to the passions they shared with you when you were all younger. Kayaking is one of my favorite pastimes on earth. When Asherel was younger, she loved kayaking so much that she bought her own kayak with her own money. However, in the last couple of years of her time home with us, she rarely kayaked with me anymore. Her kayak gathered spiders under the deck. I mostly went kayaking alone.
This Easter, I asked if she and her new hubby and my beloved granddog, Ragnar, would like to go kayaking with me and my hubby, and then have a cookout afterwards. I was surprised when she readily agreed.
Ragnar fell in a few times, until we figured out that he liked the sit-in kayak cockpit rather than the flat top kayak. We kayaked by heron rookeries, high in the treetops, with baby herons peeking over the nest edge and squawking up a storm. We passed turtles sunning while passing motorboats rocked our kayaks on bluegreen swells. Herons and osprey glided past us. We meandered up the waterway path in the middle of one island. Ragnar closed his eyes, his nose twitching as he sniffed the river scents.
And my daughter who I used to kayak with nearly every day of the summer when she was younger was back in her boat beside me on Resurrection Sunday.
Our sermon yesterday reflected what I had written in my blog Sunday before I ever knew what the pastor would focus on. He spoke of eternal peace, and that it is only found in the truth of the resurrection, which was what I had focused on in my blog as well.
"The Resurrection is real, folks," he said. Most of the rest of the sermon was as profound and well stated as his sermons always are, but I loved that line. The Resurrection of Jesus is the basis of our faith, and without it, there is NO eternal victory over death and our faith is futile.
However, I also see symbols of smaller resurrections planted in my midst to remind me of the BIG Resurrection. Beauty from ashes, hope from despair, grown children forging ways back to their boring, old parents...
Today I go to the sidewalks of the abortion center looking for a similar miracle: the parents forging ways back to their children. I am praying for resurrection of the design and instincts of the mother to protect and care for the child she carries rather than the appointment she has made with death. I go with renewed hope after celebrating Christ's resurrection yesterday on the river, floating on the waves with my family.
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Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some
of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no
resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if
Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith
is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we
testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it
is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised,
not even Christ has been raised. ...
Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the
dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the
earth will give birth to the dead.
Awesome!
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