Iron Mountain ski jump

Iron Mountain ski jump

Friday, April 4, 2014

THE REFUGE TRUCK

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

There has been an ad in the employment classifieds in our local newspaper for several days: Deliver locally manufactured refuge trucks.

A refuge truck! Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?!?

One of my Chad Mitchell Trio favorites is “City of Refuge.” “Oh, sinner man, where you gonna run to…. Run to the city of refuge. You better run, run, run…”

In ancient Israel and Judah, there were cities of refuge. If you committed a crime, specifically, manslaughter, you could go to one of those cities and no one could take vengeance against you.

It’s a great idea, but not always useful, especially if you’re old and can’t run, run, run very fast anymore. Satchel Paige was right about not looking back “…because they might be gaining on you,” but if you are slow and they are fast, they’re going to catch you, whether you’re looking back or not.

And you’d better believe it, greed and hate and fear and prejudice are always faster than you are. They’re gonna catch up to you.

I thought about it, delivering the trucks, but I don’t want just to deliver refuge trucks; I want to drive one. I want to do curbside pickup.

Imagine being able to take your greed and hatred and prejudice and fear and put them in a big green plastic can and leave them out in front of your house so the refuge truck can pick them up and take them to the sin dump.

You want a job? We need lots of refuge truck drivers.

John Robert McFarland

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]


I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.

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