A Lizard Named Lazarus

"What do you have there?" I asked my eight year old son as he bent over a little wooden box.

"It's treasure!"  He said dramatically.

"Really," I said.  "If it's enough treasure maybe it could help put you through college."

"Actually, Dad, it's some rocks I picked up and one other thing," Elliot proceeded to open the lid and a terrible odor emanated from the treasure box.

"That is the worst smelling treasure I've ever smelled!"  I said.

"That's because there's a lizard in there that I found,"  Elliot told me.

"Is it alive?"  I asked curiously, already knowing the answer.

"No, he's dead,"  Elliot said.  "It's way too hard to catch a live one."

"Maybe you should name him Lazarus," I said.  "All he needs is a resurrection to be as good as new."

In need of a resurrection.

Just a little thing and just the sort of thing that is beyond human knowledge and ability.  It is exactly the same thing that each one of us needs from a spiritual standpoint.

Without Jesus, we are "dead in trespasses and sins," as the Apostle Paul so aptly put it.  We are worthless and even worse, we stink to the One who made us.

The only solution is for us to invite the Savior to the opening of our tomb.  For only He can bring life in a place of death.  Only He can say in the place of death, "Lazarus, Come Forth!"

Alligator or Crocodile?

"Look, Dad, it's an alligator!"  Victoria told me.

"Are you sure that it isn't a crocodile?"  I asked.

"No, Dad, it's an alligator," my four year old daughter assured me emphatically.

I looked closely at the reptile.  I usually can identify the difference between the two similar (but different) species based on the signs on the zoo exhibits, but I know that there are differences other than the signs.  Unfortunately, it is really hard to tell the difference with animal crackers.

Of course, animal crackers seem to inspire a whole lot of questions for me.  Sure, it's a penguin, but which species of penguin is it (truly identifying the genus can be challenging, even for trained zoologists)?  Are there certain varieties of animal crackers that are endangered (and how can we protect them)?  And most of all, can vegans eat animal crackers (insert slippery slope argument here)?

None of this detracts from my ability to enjoy animal crackers or helps me to enjoy them better.  Which is too bad, because I really don't derive much pleasure from a package of animal crackers.

Quite simply, joy is learning to get pleasure from the smallest blessings in our lives.

It is a blessing if your spirit can lift with the tiny things of this life.  It seems as though as humans age it takes more and more to give them the same enjoyment that they once received from something as simple as an ice cream cone or a box of animal crackers.

So it is that I pray, not for bigger blessings or more thrills, but a child like sense of joy.  I want to feel happiness when I open a box of animal crackers, whether it contains alligators, crocodiles, or neither.

Peach Harvest

Our kitchen smells of peaches (which is a good smell).

That's not surprising because peach harvest is here.  We have one peach tree and when we get peaches from it, we got a lot of peaches.

What would be nice is if some reasonable number of peaches would ripen every week -- maybe 20 or 30 and we could eat them over a couple of month's time.  Instead, we got home from spending time with my family to find that we had three bushels of peaches that needed to be "taken care of."

With this in mind, Elaine has been peeling and slicing peaches to make a variety of things, including peach pie, peach bread, peach spinach salad, and peach muffins.  On the canning side she has canned peach jam, peach salsa, peach butter, and peach pie filling.

Somehow being in the middle of peach season makes me think about other seasons.  Life is about seasons.  Elaine is expecting our fifth child.  We are soon going to be moving from one season of our life to another.

The writer of Ecclesiastes said, many years ago, "For everything there is a season."

We are going to be moving from a season of diapers and bottles, into a season of driver's permits and college entrance exams.

The reality is that when you are going through a particular season of your life it is hard to enjoy the good parts and much easier to focus on the aspects where it feels overwhelming.  More often than not we feel more like an entrant into a hot dog eating competition than an attendee at a cook out.

It is hard to enjoy peaches when they are coming out your ears, but a ripe peach is hard to beat and I still enjoy eating them.  In December I know I will think fondly of the tasty fruit we had on our tree, even though we have felt a bit overwhelmed this week.

It is important to try to spend time enjoying whatever season we are in now.  Later on, all we will have are the memories of it that we make today.