CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter…
©
I had been enlisted to help
entice the hardware company to place its new distribution center in our town.
All their executives and all the employees who would have to come live and work
with us had been flown in for the weekend. The industrial development people
brought them to my church that morning “because you have the best music,” which
was true, but they might have said something about us having the best
preaching, too.
Now it
was evening, and I was at a bar-b-q at the country home of Mike, the local
businessman who “has the best toys.” The toys included a hot air balloon.
Although hot air itself is readily launched at any time [see comment on
preaching above], sunset is the best time if it is encased in a balloon. There
were some delays, however, and by the time the executives were in the balloon
and all the young guys were holding the ropes to keep it under control until
Mike lit it to, the sun had gone beyond setting.
We were
way out in the pasture, beyond the reach of the barn light. Although in my 40s,
in that group I was one of the young guys, so I was casually holding onto a
rope and chatting with the truly young, and muscular, warehouse man on the next
rope, trying to convince him to come to our church when he moved because we had
more than just good music. It was then that Mike decided to lift off.
Suddenly
all of us rope holders were air-borne, alone with the balloon, in the dark.
Have you
ever had one of those moments when not only your whole life flashes before your
eyes, but every possibility for the future flashes before you, too, and none of
them are good? We had gone up so quickly and unexpectedly that I had no idea
how high we were. I could not see the ground or the trees. I could not see the
young man beside me, although I heard him say a number of words that suggested
that if he had a vote, his company would put its distribution center at the
North Pole, where he might expect light much longer into the evening, like all
night. I could not see him in part because his skin was as dark as the night.
Since mine is white, I considered asking him if he could see me, but even if he
could, it would not tell us how high we were, and that was all that mattered.
It’s
amazing, but while I was thinking all these thoughts, and he was describing the
darkness and the uncertainty with a quite remarkable combination of words, we
managed to have a rather extensive conversation, encompassing the powers of
darkness, what either of us could see (nothing), how high we might be (15 yards
to 2 miles), how long we could hold on (his best estimate was a minute, mine
was 10 seconds), whether the balloon would set down again before we lost our
grip (NO!), if the balloon and all the executives would fly away forever if we
let go (We didn’t care), and whether angels can fly.
Then a
voice said, “Have faith. Let go of the rope.”
I let
go. So did the young man on the rope beside mine.
Despite
the age difference, we were both athletes. We knew to hit the ground on flexed
legs, let them buckle, go fetal, and roll.
I felt
his legs. “You break anything?”
“No.
You?”
“No.”
“Hey,
man, that was a good thing, telling me to let go of the rope.”
“I
didn’t say that. I thought you did.”
I’m
pretty sure it was Jesus who first said, “Let go of the rope.” We hang onto so
many ropes, thin threads of security as we’re dragged up into the darkness by
the devil’s hot air, ropes of money and power and sex and addictions and
resentment and grief and anger and revenge and violence, unsure how far into
the darkness we’ve gone, afraid of how far we might fall if we let go, of how
hard we’ll land, of what we might fracture. But our arms are aching, to the
point of breaking, and we don’t know how long we can hold on. That’s when we
hear that voice: Let go of the rope.
We asked
around, that young man and I, asked all the folks in the balloon and on the
ropes and on the ground, asked who it was that night who told us, Let go of the
rope. Each one claimed not to have said anything.
The
message of Easter is: Let go of the ropel
The
hardware company put its new distribution center in our town.
John
Robert McFarland
The “place
of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper
Peninsula, where people are Yoopers [UPers] and life is defined by winter even
in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]
You
don’t have to bookmark or favorite the CIW URL to return here. Just Google
Christ In Winter and it will show up at the top of the page.
I
tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721
No comments:
Post a Comment